The Security Council Chamber is decorated with a mural. In it. the Norwegian artist Per Krohg depicts a phoenix. The phoenix is rising from a world covered in ashes, a world rebuilding itself after war. The lower section of the mural is dark, showing a dragon, soldiers and war machines.
The United Nations was founded to protect us from our demons, to elevate the global community towards peace, cooperation and solidarity. And yet. the climate crisis is wreaking havoc. The global effort to combat poverty is faltering and Russia’s war against Ukraine is aggravating food insecurity and generating an energy crisis. Lastly, we are losing the sense of urgency that the pandemic instilled in us. Progress towards gender equality is too slow. and. too often, is even regressing in many places.
The mantra of the Indian presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) is “One Earth. One Family. One Future’” We are. after all. a global family, and the United Nations should form the backbone of this family. But as Secretary-General Guterres says, today that family is a dysfunctional one.
The European Union aspires to a multipolar world that cooperates and moves towards greater democracy and more respect for human rights. But trust is eroding, and tensions are multiplying. A dangerous bipolar confrontation threatens us. as if everyone should have to take sides against each other. A little like the frantic nuclear arms race last century, generative artificial intelligence, particularly in the military sphere, is becoming the arena for a new geopolitical competition. The late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. however, wisely said: “The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell”.
We need to acknowledge the situation. Today the United Nations system is stuck in a rut and is being hindered by hostile forces. Our responsibility is to commit to putting multilateral cooperation back on track. To that end. we need to restore trust, resolve the most pressing problems and repair the machinery of the United Nations. Trust is built on respect for the sacred principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations: sovereignty, territorial integrity and human rights.
Nevertheless, for the past 19 months, a permanent member of the Security Council. Russia, has been brazenly waging a war of conquest against a neighbouring country that has never threatened it. shamelessly flouting our founding principles. This brutal war is being waged with all its horror and disregard for human life. The General Assembly has condemned the war on several occasions. This is. of course, a powerful reminder of the principles of sovereignty and integrity to which we are so attached. But that has not stopped the Kremlin in its murderous adventure or curbed its sense of impunity. The European Union, together with others, has vowed that this impunity cannot last forever and that justice will be done. The European Union will steadfastly support Ukraine in its right of self-defence.
We are well aware, and the European Union knows perfectly well, that this war against Ukraine does not make the many other major challenges facing the world disappear. The planet is boiling. The world is torn apart by poverty, injustice and discrimination. A miracle will not happen if we do not decide to mobilise the massive amounts of necessary funding now. For example, we have made a collective pledge to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But if we stick to the commitments announced so far — and we are nowhere near doing so — global warming will reach 2.5°C by the end of the century. We must wake up to that reality now.
With that in mind, the European Union has raised its targets for renewable energy use and energy efficiency. We see that others are following us. as is the case, in part at least, with the G20. We call for more members of the international community to commit to this.
It is also in everyone’s interest to help developing countries to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. It is clear that only one quarter of global private investment is
being made in developing countries, yet the 620 countries are responsible for 80 per cent of global emissions. It is only this year that the international community is expected to reach the pledge it made several years ago of $100 billion to finance climate action. The European Union is a driving force, providing $26 billion in 2021. which was more than its share. The International Energy Agency estimates that global investment in the energy transition should reach $5 trillion per annum in 2030 — more than 4 per cent of global gross domestic product — to achieve zero carbon by 2050. That is why. at the upcoming twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Dubai, we must establish the financing for the Loss and Damage Fund decided on last year in Sharm El-Sheikh.
As we see day after day. natural disasters are unfolding at a dizzying pace, causing suffering and desolation on every continent and in all our countries, most recently in Libya. That is why we are calling for the creation of an international disaster fund, which is more necessary than ever to ensure rapid and fair assistance and strengthen our collective resilience. Prevention is key. We support the work being done within the United Nations on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Finally, trade is a powerful lever to bring together climate challenges and prosperity. We are not giving in. and we call for an urgent solution for the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement mechanism.
The economic and financial situation of vulnerable economies has been seriously affected by the coronavirus disease crisis and by Russia’s war against Ukraine. More than 50 low-income countries have defaulted on their debts; a dozen others could follow suit in the near future. Because of debt-servicing, which has supplanted expenditure on social protection, education and health. 165 million individuals worldwide have been tipped into poverty. No one should be forced to choose between alleviating poverty and greening the economy.
We cannot afford the luxury of another debate about how much money to donate. It is not a question of begging; it is a question of justice. It is a question of making the global financial system more robust, fairer and better prepared for the challenges of this century. The reallocation of $100 billion in special drawing rights is an important step. We know that it is not enough; we need to do even more. Of course, we support the Sustainable Development Goals Stimulus presented by Secretary-General Guterres. The European Union is fully committed to implementing the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatment.
We must go even further. The Bretton Woods system requires fundamental reform. It must be made fairer, more inclusive and more effective — that must be the aim. Those institutions were created when many countries were still under colonial rule. The world has changed a great deal since then, yet today the Group of Seven countries still wield almost absolute decision-making power. The European Union is prepared to better share that decision-making power. Regions that have virtually no say need to be more and better integrated and more and better involved.
Secondly, a financial shake-up is essential. Whole swathes of the world and the populations represented therein are deprived of access to financing. That not only hampers progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, but it also increases the risk of a debt crisis. Following on from the Bridgetown Initiative, the Paris Summit opened the debate on a New Global Financing Pact, launched by the French President and the Prime Minister of Barbados, and showed the way forward. In the words of Mia Mottley. there is now a “need for pace and scope ... Let us... not only do the right thing, but do it in time, and do it for the right reasons”.
Indeed, we must do more to mobilize the private sector through public capital. We need to act to increase, strengthen, tighten and consolidate the lending capacity of international financial institutions as an essential safety net. To give one example, in the course of 60 years of existence, the World Bank’s financing power, as a proportion of global production, has fallen more than sevenfold. That says it all. We need also to reduce the cost of access to credit for vulnerable countries, which is far too high compared to the cost of access for so-called advanced countries. We also need to adapt the rules of the multilateral development banks as regards capital adequacy. That will allow them to utilize their balance sheets in a more dynamic way without jeopardizing their financial soundness.
Three years ago. Mr. Tedros and I put forward the idea of an international treaty on pandemics. Together, we embarked on a mission to convince the international community to launch negotiations within the framework of the World Health Organization. The world needs an ambitious and legally binding instrument to prevent, prepare for and respond to any future pandemics in a spirit of solidarity. I now appeal to us all to redouble our efforts to conclude the negotiations by May 2024.
The European Union is making determined efforts to that end. We want to be a constructive and open partner.
The Secretary-General and all the United Nations teams are the workhorses of action on a massive scale for the benefit of humankind and the values of the United Nations Charter. But as we have seen. United Nations governance is all too often and increasingly hindered. The European Union therefore supports the proposals for reform presented by the Secretary- General in his report Our Common Agenda (A/75/982). We also emphasize the progress made on working methods. However, it is our formal wish, from this rostrum to go one step further and try to provide a new perspective, a contribution to the necessary and urgent debate on United Nations reform. We have three proposals concerning, respectively, the right to veto, representativeness and the role of multilateral regional organizations. On those three points. I call for an amendment to the United Nations Charter.
First, the right to veto in its current form is subject to abuse. It renders the Security Council powerless. A permanent member of the Security Council can flagrantly violate our Charter and international law with impunity. A permanent member can abuse the right to veto to prevent sanctions against itself. It can even exploit the Security Council for the purpose of propaganda, disinformation and. let it be said. lies. And yet. the Charter provides that a member of the Security Council should abstain in the voting when it is the subject of the vote. I urgently call on other members of the Security Council to invoke that clause where Russia is concerned.
In the same spirit, the European Union supports France and Mexico’s initiative to restrain the use of the veto in cases of mass atrocities. We also support the code of conduct regarding Security Council action against genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. We also support efforts to enhance the transparency and accountability of the Security Council. However, apart from that, in the context of Charter reform. I believe that we should set up a mechanism that combines majority decision-making with moderate, measured and flexible use of the right to veto.
My second point concerns representativeness. The Security Council does not reflect today’s world. There are 60 countries that have never yet held a seat on the Security Council. Whole swathes of the world — Africa. South America, the Caribbean. Asia — have little or no representation. We therefore support a global reform of the Security Council that strengthens the voices of those regions and countries.
Power and legitimacy go hand in hand. The Security Council’s lack of representativeness is inevitably undermining its legitimacy, yet legitimacy is key and should be reinforced on two fronts. The United Nations is a club of nations, and we consider the nation State to be its basic unit. An increase in the number of permanent members of the Security Council is certainly inevitable.
But we believe that we have to go further than that. The role played by regional and continental organizations is growing. That is a fact. The European Union, of course, the African Union, the Community of Latin-American and Caribbean States (CELAC). the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and others reflect a new level of legitimacy in international and multilateral forums. They play an active part in political and economic coordination. They create spaces for closer cooperation, spaces for connectivity. Increasingly, they are even security actors. More so than in the past, those organizations are spaces where rules are made.
That is the case of European integration. But the European Union’s example serves as an inspiration to others, such as the African Union, which is working hard to create a large continental free-trade area, or ASEAN, which is aiming for increased cooperation among its member States. Those organizations are exerting a growing influence on the multilateral stage. They are vital contributors to stability, and I believe their role in the multilateral system must grow. After all. they shape the structure of the multipolar world we are hoping for. That is why. through me. the European Union immediately supported the call of Senegalese President Macky Sall to include the African Union as a full member of the G20. and that membership was granted a few weeks ago.
I am absolutely convinced that the United Nations would become more legitimate, effective and authoritative if it decided to guarantee regional organizations a more prominent role within the United Nations . Including them would create a virtuous circle. It would encourage regional organizations to cooperate more and better with each other, contributing to their own stability and to stability in the world. In that context. I intend to take the initiative to propose an institutional summit among the European Union, the African Union. CELAC and ASEAN, to which of course the United
Nations Secretary-General would be invited. The aim will be to reflect on how those organizations can act together to strengthen the multilateral system, both in the framework of the United Nations and in the other international forums.
The European Union, through our history and through our DNA. wishes to be a global, fair and reliable partner. The European Union and its member States are the world’s biggest donor for development and peacekeeping. We are active, including in regions in which conflicts are protracted hopelessly. In the Sahel, successive military coups are fuelling instability and insecurity, to the detriment of the local populations. I take this opportunity to send a message of friendship and unfailing personal support to the President of the Niger. Mohamed Bazoum. who has been imprisoned in a house by a military junta for 56 days now.
In the Middle East, we maintain that lasting peace will be achieved only when Palestinians and Israelis live in security in the context of a two-State solution.
We are shocked by the latest devastating developments in the South Caucasus. Military force is not a sustainable solution when there are hearts and minds to be won.
Around the globe, the European Union will continue to assume its responsibilities, alongside anyone who sincerely wishes to work towards the common good, for peace and for prosperity. But the European Union will never be intimidated by violence or blackmail.
The Per Krohg mural is a work of imagination, but it is also an appeal to our conscience and a reminder more crucial now than ever before in a world faced with so many dangers. As the philosopher Friedrich Holderlin so rightly said. “But where the danger lies, also grows the saving power”. Faced with dangers, we have a vision of a better, brighter world. We have powerful means. I am a great believer in the power of collective intelligence. It is up to us to act. now. For a world that is fairer, freer and more prosperous.