UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called for bolstered cooperation between the United Nations and regional and sub-regional organizations for facilitating peaceful resolution of outstanding disputes and to respond to the emerging threats to international peace and security.
“Closer political interaction among regional countries can also serve to address the security dimensions of these challenges,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi told the UN Security Council on Friday.
Speaking in a debate on cooperation between the U.N. and regional and sub-regional organizations in maintaining international peace and security, she said, “Our multipolar world is more free and vibrant, yet more chaotic and turbulent,”
Poverty remained widespread, xenophobia was on the rise, violations of human rights were rampant, situations of foreign occupation persisted, violent extremism and terrorism have assumed dangerous new forms and the global refugee crisis had acquired unprecedented proportions.
“One of the tragic ironies of our age is that we are witnessing unprecedented human suffering at a time when spectacular advances in human progress are being made possible by the technological and scientific breakthroughs of our era,” Ambassador Lodhi told the 15-member Council.
New and complex conflicts were emerging while older and unresolved disputes continued to fester, the Pakistani envoy said, adding the international order established after the Second World War was falling apart, but a new order had yet to emerge.
While the United Nations remained indispensable, Ambassador Lodhi said it faced the imposing task of dealing simultaneously with a variety of opportunities and challenges. It could therefore benefit from enhanced cooperation with regional and sub-regional intergovernmental organizations.
While regional organizations play a positive role in addressing many diverse challenges, especially economic and social ones, she said, cooperation among members was an essential factor for the success of regional arrangements. With relatively smaller memberships, regional arrangements usually yield speedier cooperation as evidenced in the African Union, the European Union, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).
Noting that Pakistan had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), paving the way for its full membership, she called for enhanced dialogue and cooperation between that entity and the United Nations since they shared the same purposes and principles.
While One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping, was a significant example of ways in which cross-regional cooperation could be promoted, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was a major component of that “visionary and ambitious” enterprise, the Pakistani envoy added.
“The United Nations provides the umbrella under which regional organizations can promote cooperation with each other in advancing their objectives of peace, stability and prosperity,” she said, adding that the principles contained in the United Nations Charter remained the foundation upon which nations could cooperate across regions in an interdependent world.
