Building bridges

IT HAS BEEN A YEAR since India took its place in the Security Council for the eighth time as an elected member.

- T.S Tirumurthi

But certain things have not changed. The pandemic is still raging. The world remains divided and polarised on issues of global importance. Conflicts on the agenda of the Council have persisted and new ones have emerged. Terrorism has not only continued unabated but expanded its tentacles to new areas, especially in Africa.

The highlight of India’s presence in the Security Council, so far, was certainly our presidency in August 2021. It was a presidency that saw several historic firsts. The prime minister of India for the first time chaired a high-level Security Council meeting. For the first time, the Security Council adopted a presidential statement on maritime security, capturing its holistic concept, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, freedom of navigation, piracy, terrorism at sea, etc.

Given our predominant role in UN peacekeeping over the years, where India continues to be the largest troop-contributing country, we have given UN peacekeeping a strong focus during our stint. The external affairs minister [Dr. S. Jaishankar] chaired two sessions, one of which was on Technology and Peacekeeping, which was another first. After nearly five decades, India piloted a resolution ‘protecting the protectors’ calling for accountability for crimes against peacekeepers.

To “Walk The Talk” on our commitment to protect UN peacekeepers, we contributed $1.67 million to launch the UNITE Aware technology platform. We readily responded to the request of the UN Secretary-General [Antonio Guterres] and gifted two lakh Covid vaccines to cover every peacekeeper, in every peacekeeping mission, throughout the world, in addition to upgrading two of our hospitals in Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.