Mr. Osman Saleh, Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed the 77th United Nations General Assembly today 26 September.
In his address, Minister Osman Saleh said that the annual session of the UN General Assembly, held under the fitting theme – “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges” – is taking place at an exceedingly preoccupying time of profound, intertwined, and multiple crises of epic proportion and these calamities have adversely impacted all corners of the global village.
Minister Osman went on to say that in the past two and half years, the COVID-19 pandemic had exacted a huge human toll in global terms and has inculcated chronic economic difficulties and structural setbacks through domestic economic downturns and disruption of international supply chains and that while this scourge persists, the world confronted these days with equally perilous fallouts of climate change and global warming, which are exacerbating the already precarious situation.
Furthermore, Minister Osman said that the cyclical conflicts, which have assumed an exceptionally dangerous and almost apocalyptic dimensions with the war in Ukraine, have ratcheted up the impending crises to unprecedented levels and besides the Covid-19 pandemic, the other interlocking variables and dimensions of the crises constitute the cumulative consequences and tell-tale symptoms of a tenuous and highly flawed global governance architecture and are byproducts and manifestations of systemic failure of the unipolar world order that has prevailed for over thirty years.
Minister Osman stressed that the much vaunted “rules-based international order” represents a skewed set of duplicitous, asymmetric and non-consensual norms and regulations and was essentially designed to advance and safeguard the privileges of its principal architects; to the exclusion of the majority of other nations and peoples and promote monolithic and condescending ideological perspective gives no room and space to historical context, distinct realities and cultures, and above all, to independent policy choices of other sovereign peoples and nations.
The costly wars of intervention, especially in Africa and the Middle East in the past thirty years; heavy-handed meddling in domestic affairs; imposition of illicit and unilateral sanctions; distortion and weaponization of human rights; in brief all the episodes of international and regional instability emanate from, and are direct derivatives of, the faulty global governance architecture, Minister Osman underlined.
Minister Osman stressed that the negative ramifications of this dysfunctional system, are not confined to the sovereign nations and peoples of the Global South but extreme and ludicrous inequalities where less than 1% of the population own 99% of national wealth; unbridled consumerism which has bred and continues to aggravate climate change; atomization of societies that have literally decimated social compassion and community-care by fostering exclusive and unnatural individualism; are dangerous trends that will ultimately undermine the social fabric and stability in individual countries and the global village at large.
Minister Osman further said that Eritrea has indeed borne the brunt of this unfair international order through illicit sanctions; the use of surrogate forces to create a situation of permanent conflict and instability; as well as; the weaponization of human rights to isolate and ostracize the young nation.
Regarding Eritrea’s view Minister Osman underlined the need of the global village and the UN system to devise a new international order that is anchored on consensus with the full and equal participation of its constituencies; the sacrosanct principles of the equality of all Member States and the respect of the sovereignty and political independence of nations and peoples to be upheld; equitable representation of all Member States in all decision- making international bodies to be guaranteed through viable and sustainable modalities and mechanisms; and selective and partial parameters that impede collective wellbeing and the fostering of a compassionate social system requires thorough review.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Information, Eritrea.
