Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 13
Ahead of its election to the UN Security Council (UNSC) for a two-year term, India’s new Permanent Representative to the UN, TS Tirumurti, said the UN needs to change to reflect the contemporary realities to enable them to remain effective and credible.
‘Rules neither transparent nor consistent’
- Learning from the opaque methods of the UNSC in trying to get Masood Azhar blacklisted, India feels that rules are neither transparent nor consistent
- For instance, there is no uniformity in the procedures of decision-making by various sanctions committees, India stated at the UN last month
Learning from the opaque methods of the UNSC and its sanctions committee in trying to get Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar blacklisted as an international terrorist, India feels that rules are neither transparent nor consistent. For instance, there is no uniformity in the procedures of decision-making by various sanctions committees, India stated at the UN last month.
The UN needs to change to reflect the contemporary realities to enable them to remain effective and credible.
There is a sense that too much of their work is being carried out without the full knowledge of all UNSC members. Neither is there any fixed practice in terms of their reporting cycles — there are differing time-periods and methodologies for reporting of similarly constituted bodies handling similar work.
Another worrying aspect relates to lack of transparency and consistency in making public the decisions of these bodies. For instance, in many cases, decisions regarding delisting requests made to some of these bodies by sanctioned individuals and entities are not made public at all.
Some subsidiary bodies do not even mention that any such request was received and declined from known and listed terrorist entities or individuals. In effect, the failed efforts of terrorists to get themselves de-listed are shrouded in secrecy.
The non-permanent nations have already been making efforts in this direction and won a few minor victories. Due to one of them, India and the other non-permanent members will be invited to observe the meetings of the UNSC and its subsidiary bodies three months before they formally begin their terms on January 1, 2021.
Ahead of the June 17 poll, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had outlined New Delhi’s priorities for its candidature. Under the rubric of ‘New Orientation For A Reformed Multilateral System’ (NORMS), he said India aims to create new opportunities in five key segments — general progress, effective response to international terrorism, reforming multilateral systems, comprehensive approach to peace and security and technology with a human touch.