It has been a long-standing belief that the horse-shoe table, which seats the UN Security Council, will only open up if there is a cataclysmic event in the world.
Perhaps, the coronavirus pandemic is it.
After years of being pilloried, multilateralism and global cooperation have seen a surge in demand with the coronavirus pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong case for this during the G20’s video conference on the pandemic.
The scale and global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the developed world the hardest, has unleashed a barrage of criticism over the WHO’s handling of the crisis, its purported attempts to shield the Chinese of any culpability and for not ringing the alarm soon enough. The US, its biggest financial backer, wants to withdraw its funding and has accused it of becoming “Chinese”.
The US threat is not unlike its action at the WTO but also guided by the president’s electoral compulsions. Nonetheless, the huge challenge posed by the outbreak and such pandemics demands global cooperation from countries across all regions and, most importantly, from both the developed and developing world. Reform within the WHO is, therefore, critical and should be in the interest of both the US and China.
The pandemic is also a global health emergency that must be dealt with using a multi-pronged approach. But, at the same time, its impact requires pro-active global cooperation to mitigate its onslaught on our economies and other elements of our lives that have evolved in recent decades, including travel.
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Key amongst organisations that are in dire need of reform are the Bretton Woods Institutions – the IMF and the World Bank. The International Civil Aviation Organisation, which guides international air travel rules may also scrutinised.
The year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary since the UN’s inception and the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold a special high-level event on September 21 under the rubric ‘The Future We Want, the UN We Need: Reaffirming our Collective Commitment to Multilateralism’. It will also adopt an outcome document on this occasion which ought to set the global agenda for the coming decades.
India has a special place in the emerging scheme of things. While our membership of the G20 is a testimony of the same, it is also clear that even to keep things under check, let alone ameliorate matters, India, which houses a sixth of humanity, is critical. We must, therefore, push strongly for institutional reform in multilateral bodies so that their governance leverages the capabilities of the major players among both the developed and developing countries. Apart from the WHO and the Bretton Woods Institutions, India should also push for expansion of the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, a priority that requires our immediate refocus.
India will be serving on the UN Security Council for the term 2021-22 and will have the opportunity to weigh-in on major global decisions for a two year period. We last served on the Security Council in 2011-12, a time of great turbulence in international peace and security with the rise of the Arab Spring protests and changes to the landscape of Middle Eastern politics that continue to bedevil global peace.
It is unlikely that India’s tenure in 2021-22 will be bereft of such turmoil. Indeed, even in the context of the coronavirus outbreak, while a UNSC resolution against them was not possible given their veto, the Chinese managed to stave off discussions on the subject in the UNSC in March because they held its presidency.
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India has two other special openings, around major summits, where a push for multilateral re-vitalisation and reform can be made. The BRICS Summit this year scheduled to be held in Russia and, even though not yet announced, the 2021 summit to be held in India. India will also be hosting the G20 Summit in 2022, when we will be marking the 75th anniversary of Independence. During both of these Summits, India will also hold a seat at the UN Security Council.
As the host, there are certain prerogatives that India will enjoy in terms of setting the agenda, which should be effectively used to drum up support amongst the biggest players in the world for reforms in multilateral governance in the critical areas of international peace and security, climate, disaster response and resilience and pandemics.
Manjeev Puri was India’s ambassador to the EU and Nepal and has extensive experience dealing with the UN, including as Deputy Permanent Representative of India to the UN.