External affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Sunday that large parts of the world cannot be left out of decision-making, and urged the United Nations to show leadership rather than remain a spectator to global crises. Speaking in New Delhi on UN Day, he underlined the need for long-awaited reforms.
He said the world is imperfect, yet people continuously strive toward greater perfection, and that for the UN this means recognising its shortcomings and limitations and seeking improvement. “The case for reformed multilateralism gets stronger by the day,” he said.
Jaishankar said countries with little say were paying the price for conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine. He also described terrorism as a threat to peace and said its use as an instrument of statecraft is simply unacceptable.
“It can never be justified; it can never be rationalised. Yet, it continues because not all states really display zero-tolerance. Despite history holding so many lessons, some still allow political calculations to take precedence.”
He added that the world must develop sharper awareness of this common threat and come together with stronger resolve to counter terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
He said the world cannot advance half-prosperous and half-denied, and that in an era of intricate supply chains, globalised markets and common resources this is a prescription for continuous instability. The Global South, he said, faces a 4F crisis of finance, fuel, food and fertiliser, and the Global North has equal stakes in finding solutions. He called for the international economy to be urgently de-risked and for nations to be given more diversified options, saying market distortions through constriction and choke-points only add to suffering, and that a genuine dialogue is overdue.
Calling artificial intelligence the mother of all change, Jaishankar said something so sweeping and consequential cannot be left in the hands of just a few. “That would go counter to the trends of freedom and democratisation that the world has seen over the last eighty years,” he added.