Pres. Ali urges Permanent Members of UNSC to support Ambassador Rodrigues-Birkett to become next UNSG

President Dr Irfaan Ali on Thursday urged Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to support Guyana’s candidate, Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, to become the next UN Secretary General.

He made the remarks at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.

See excerpt of his address:

Mr. President

As we commence this 81st Session, we have the opportunity to build a United Nations that is truly fit for purpose.

The crisis confronting multilateralism can become the catalyst for its renewal. The United Nations must not be a monument to the past; it must become an instrument for the future. We need a Security Council that reflects the geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century, not the power structures of 1945; a Council that embraces the emerging multipolarity of our world, including permanent representation from Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

A new multilateralism

Mr. President

If the United Nations is to remain humanity’s best hope, then this is not the hour to retreat from multilateralism. This is the hour to reclaim and to renew it. For it is in times such as these—when wars rage across borders, when the shadow of existential threats falls across the future of human civilisation, when the old certainties are dissolving before our eyes—that multilateralism must rise.

Multilateralism rests upon the proposition that our destinies are bound together, that the security of one cannot be at the insecurity of another, and that in an interdependent world, cooperation is a necessity; and where there can be no enduring prosperity where inequality deepens, and no just international order where rules are applied selectively.

It is to that truth that this eighty-first session of the General Assembly must recommit itself. But recommitment cannot mean merely repeating the language of yesterday. The world has changed, and multilateralism must change with it.

We need a new and invigorated multilateralism—one equal to the turbulence of our age, sufficiently courageous to confront its trials, sufficiently imaginative to navigate its transformations, and sufficiently principled to defend the rule of international law.

To make the United Nations fit for purpose we must make it more transparent, accountable and responsive. We must strengthen the General Assembly and give greater weight to its deliberative and representative authority. We must bring greater coherence to a system too often divided by institutional rivalries, bureaucratic silos and competing mandates. We must ensure that the resources of the UN match the responsibilities we have entrusted to it.

Leadership

But institutions do not reform themselves. They require leadership capable of seeing beyond the present and imagining the institution the future demands.

The United Nations needs leadership that can bring its different organs, agencies and programmes into a greater unity of purpose. Leadership that can build bridges where division has become habitual; leadership that can defend the principles of the Charter without fear or favour.

The United Nations needs its next Secretary-General to work with all member States to restore confidence in the Organisation, mobilise its energies, and turn the language of multilateralism from aspiration into action. The reform of the United Nations, the restoration of trust and the need to manage transformation is, therefore, inseparable from the question of leadership. And the choice of its next Secretary-General will be, in no small measure, a choice about the kind of United Nations we wish to leave to the generations that follow.

Guyana’s nominee for UN Secretary-General

It is in this spirit that Guyana has put forward the candidature of Her Excellency Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett for the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations. She has served her country, represented the developing world, and worked within the multilateral system with a deep understanding of both its promise and its imperfections.

We believe that her experience, her convictions and her record of service speak directly to the kind of leadership this moment demands.

Her candidature, therefore, acquires special significance amid the profound challenges confronting the United Nations and the international order. We need leadership capable of restoring trust without compromising principle; of listening without surrendering conviction; of building bridges across the widening chasms between North and South, between large states and small, between the developed and developing worlds.

We need a Secretary-General who will defend the Charter not only when it is politically convenient, but precisely when its principles are under pressure.

On a personal note, Mr. President, Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett has drawn on every experience. Her upbringing encompassed every struggle. Every aspect of her accomplishments has defined and broken barriers.

An indigenous woman coming from a small indigenous village, defying the odds- the odds against indigenous persons, the odds against women, the odds against poverty-defying every challenge and rising to the top amidst those challenges. Her character is built on struggle, sacrifice, and commitment. Her accomplishments are crafted in her humanity.

This is an individual of exceptional qualities, not because she is Guyanese or because she comes from Guyana, but because I know her personally, and many of you know this too. The Permanent Representatives here in New York know her character, her integrity, her will, her commitment, her love for humanity, and her love for this world. And I know that this world will be a better place with Carolyn Rodrigues as the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

In the humblest of ways, I call on the P5, the Security Council, and every member here to look beyond the small country that nominated her. CARICOM as a body has endorsed her. And let us rise to the challenge of giving this indigenous woman the chance of helping us craft together, the United Nations we want to see succeed.

The responsibility for recommending the next Secretary-General rests, in the first instance, with the Security Council, and we therefore respectfully place before its members the candidature of Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett. Endorsed by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), we invite all to consider her candidacy on its merits and to judge whether her vision, experience, expertise and record can help restore confidence in the United Nations at this critical moment.