NEW DELHI: Making a forceful push for United Nations Security Council reforms, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Tuesday that global governance structures that exclude Africa and India and their 2.5 billion people cannot have legitimacy and collective peace and security will continue to elude the world.
Inaugurating the ministerial session on the second day of the third India Africa Forum summit, Swaraj said that even as the United Nations celebrated 70 years of its establishment, “our nations continue to be excluded from appropriate representation in the institutions of global governance”. She asserted that India and Africa can no longer be excluded from permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
She felt that unless more democractic global governance structures were put in place, “more equitable and just international security and development frameworks that are essential for the collective peace and prosperity of this planet, will continue to elude us”.
She felt that the 70th session of the UNGA would be an “opportune moment to achieve concrete results on this long pending issue”. Swaraj specifically thanked Sam Kutesa, Uganda foreign minister, for his “leadership” as president of the UNGA in commencing text-based negotiations. “We look forward to working together in an active negotiating process to take this forward,” she said.
She also callled for a joint effort in countering “growing scourge of terrorism”. “The menace of non-state actors and cross border terrorism has acquired a new dimension. The scale of this challenge is huge and undermines the peace and stability in our countries, which is essential for our development efforts,” she said.
With “fast-growing linkages of such terrorist groups”, Swaraj called for stepping up “our cooperation through intelligence exchange, training and other measures to counter this menace”. “We also hope that the international community will cooperate with urgency to adopt the Comprehensive Convention against International Terrorism,” she said.
Climate Change also featured prominently in Swaraj’s speech, with Swaraj stating that India and Africa “have shared common concerns and interests” on the need for assistance to developing countries for adaption and mitigation.