Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Guest blogger for
Part of FCDO Outreach
27th February 2017 London, UK
The UK Presidency of the UN Security Council
The United Kingdom will take on the Presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of March. This will be our 62nd Security Council Presidency, a position that rotates between each of the 15 members of the Council monthly. The UK’s first Presidency was in 1946. At that time conflict prevention was top of the agenda, closely followed by Russia’s military presence in the Middle East, and Europe rebuilding itself.
So you may be asking yourself what has changed?
Well, a lot, actually. The UN needs reform but it has achieved an immense amount in the past 71 years and the UK, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has played a central role throughout.
The UN has helped bring an end to wars in the Middle East, Mozambique and Cambodia, to name a few. It has brought justice to victims of war crimes by holding perpetrators accountable. It has provided aid to the world’s most devastated communities and defended human rights globally. And it has helped bring peace to places like Ivory Coast and Liberia through peacekeeping operations. Overall, the UN Security Council has adopted 2343 resolutions and the UK has been present and engaged in all of these.
We have high ambitions for the UK’s Presidency this March. Our main focus will be conflict prevention in Africa, building on the new UN Secretary-General’s focus on the region. This will include a Security Council visit to the Lake Chad Basin to shine a spotlight on the threat from Boko Haram, the dire humanitarian situation and the underlying causes of fragility.
Later in the month, we expect the Foreign Secretary to chair high level meetings on South Sudan and Somalia. He will be the twelfth Foreign Secretary to address the Security Council. There will also be a ministerial-level debate on Modern Slavery, an issue the UK is playing a leading role in profiling at the UN.
Throughout the month, we will strive to be action-oriented, transparent and interactive, pushing for meaningful outcomes from meetings, briefing the media and engaging with civil society.
The UK has played a leading role at the UN since Winston Churchill signed the United Nations Charter in 1945, and we will continue to use our top seat at the UN table as a force for good.
You can see more on our work and stay up-to-date on the progress we make during the month by following us on @foreignoffice, @UKUN_NewYork and my personal account @MatthewRycroft1. It would be great to hear your comments.
We still have yet to see a member from the UK’s ethnic minority / BME to be appointed as our UK’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, reflecting the diversity of the UK he or she would represent. It is absurd that meritocracy and talent based candidate for the Ambassador has only been found among the white colleagues to date, as if the BME still has catching up to do in this 21st century. At least the US is ahead us in this, if not perfect.
Prevention is excellent and critically important. How can we measure prevention?
To say the UK defends human rights globally is a simple lie. The UK continues in its failure to raise the profile in Latin America and in particular, fails to highlight Venezuela’s tragic preventable collapse at the hands of tyranny despite many countries standing up on their own to denounce it. The U.K’s silence is deafening, shameful and highly suspect. Stop hiding behind the EU and publicly condemn the hateful, illegitimate, anti democratic, corrupt, drug-trafficking regime in Venezuela that tramples over human rights and the Constitution, spreading evil and sponsoring global terrorism in the process. Speak out against the disgraceful, unlawful imprisonment of political opponents like Leopoldo Lopez and show the U.K. truly will seek to uphold democracy wherever in the world those threats to it take place, not just select regions where we have old empirical guilt complexes, like Africa and the Middle East, where still, after centuries of trying, the UK still can’t get things right. We are witnessing disaster unfold in Venezuela and we must, must help NOW! Please!
Awesome!
There has indeed been some very valuable work done at the UN and I have no doubt that UK influence has been mostly very positive.
Great to focus on Africa as it seems more fragile now than ever before. Although, Steven Pinker does an extraordinary job of convincing his audience that the World has become less barbaric/violent in his book “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.
Conflict prevention is a smart choice but how will we measure prevention?
Good luck and wishes of continued success at the UNSC.