“The real inflection point will be the world attending fully to the needs of the marginalized and forgotten. Our greatest global challenges are poverty, inequality, joblessness, and feeling excluded,” said Dr. Pandor, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, speaking at the United Nations.
“South Africa, like many other developing countries, faces huge developmental challenges, including in our energy sector,” she said. “We need to globally address global energy shortages.”
In order to achieve development, a new paradigm is needed in the world. She pointed to the need to implement a new mode of collaboration at the UN: “It is unacceptable that 77 years after its establishment, five nations wield disproportionate decision-making power in the United Nations system as a whole. Transformation must include more representative, transparent, and accountable organs of global governance. For the UN to be effective, the General Assembly must be revitalized, the Security Council must be reformed. We also cannot have a credible organization if persistent transgressors of the Charter are not held accountable.”
She singled out one in particular, and it wasn’t Russia: “Israel must be held accountable for its destructive actions that have significantly impaired the possibility of a two-state solution.”
Kenya also called for reforms of the United Nations: “Let me express the strong collective conviction of my country that the relevance, legitimacy, and moral authority of the United Nations will forever remain deficient, undermined by the absence of comprehensive reforms of the United Nations Security Council,” which he said cannot properly execute its mission if it is “undemocratic and unrepresentative.”
