2023-09-21 23:05:55
Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) made a plea for “sensible and pragmatic multilateralism” at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday evening (local time) and called for efficient reforms. International cooperation must be renewed and recalibrated. According to the text of the speech, Schallenberg emphasized his call for a reorganization of the UN Security Council. The world is currently “in a sad state”.
The current period is “indisputably one of the most difficult in recent history,” the ÖVP minister gave a gloomy assessment and gave a few examples: “The highest number of violent conflicts since the Second World War, including a comprehensive war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. One deepening global climate crisis. Extreme weather events causing devastation around the world. Increasing poverty, social divisions and a regression in human rights and the development gains hard-earned over the past decades.”
“The world seems to be in a sad state and one wonders whether something even worse is to come,” emphasized Schallenberg. “We are indeed living in a time of uncertainty.” “Shifts and cracks in our trading systems, security systems and multilateral systems” can already be noticed. According to Schallenberg, this leads to a “feeling of insecurity and unease, to the feeling of living in a permanent state of emergency.”
In this world of change, citizens rightly expect answers and it is the responsibility of politicians to formulate hopeful but realistic visions. “This means seeing the world as it is, with a clear mind and without rose-colored glasses.”
But that also means “that we have to be wary of those polarizing populists who spread fake news and offer seemingly simple answers to complex questions that want us to believe that we can solve problems by simply negating them Let’s pull up the drawbridge and disconnect ourselves from reality.” Be it “climate change, disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, mutual political and economic dependencies or the increasing multipolarity in geopolitics”.
But it is also a fact that the current multilateral system does not act proactively and effectively enough. “It has had little effect in countries like Afghanistan, where women are systematically denied their most basic rights to education and participation in public life, in the Sahel, where a series of coups only serve the generals and not the citizens.” It was also unable to stop Russia (“a permanent member of the Security Council”) from “invading its sovereign neighbor Ukraine in a fit of neo-imperialist aggression.”
The UN Security Council, which was set up after the Second World War, no longer reflects the world of today, Schallenberg reiterated his criticism, which he had already expressed several times during the United Nations’ “High Level Week”. “It must offer a seat to more countries that were excluded when it was founded, including from Africa.”
Schallenberg announced that Austria would continue to advocate for reform. “This includes our candidacy for a non-permanent seat in the 2026 elections.” The Foreign Minister had already accused the committee of “inability to act” during the general debate at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday. The UN Security Council currently has five permanent members (China, France, Russia, USA and Great Britain), each of which can block decisions with a veto. Ten additional members are elected to the committee for two years each. Five of the non-permanent members are reappointed every year.
For a country like Austria – “militarily neutral, export-oriented and in the heart of the European continent” – the answer clearly lies in cooperation, Schallenberg noted. Therefore, the UN must be “a space for real dialogue” and not an “echo chamber or a club of like-minded people”. “Let’s not kid ourselves: the world isn’t black or white. It’s just not that simple,” Schallenberg said realistically, before exuding something like optimism: “We will come out of this era of transformation stronger, wealthier and emerge more resilient.”
On Thursday, Schallenberg also held bilateral talks with his counterpart Ei Cohen (Israel) and Saleumxay Kommasith (Laos). Meetings with Jewish organizations and bilateral appointments with the foreign ministers of Cambodia (Sok Chenda Sophea) and Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, minister of industry and technology and climate representative of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were planned for Friday. Al Jaber is also president of the World Climate Summit (COP-28) planned for December in Dubai.
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