São Paulo – Tunisia was voted a non-permanent UN Security Council member for 2020-2021, its Embassy in Brasília, Brazil reported this Tuesday (11). This is the fourth time the Arab country gets elected to the United Nations body.
Last Friday (7) also saw the UN General Assembly vote for the inclusion of Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Vietnam as non-permanent Council members.
The UN The UN said the five elected countries will replace Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait and Poland – whose terms will end on December 31, 2019. Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa will retain non-permanent membership for another year. The permanent Security Council members are United States, United Kingdom, Russia and China.
According to the UN, membership votes were divided as follows: three from Asia and the Asia-Pacific, one from Eastern Europe and one from Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Tunisia’s election for the fourth time reflects the respect our country enjoys in the international arena as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, and the reliance in our ability to make a positive contribution to the challenges involved in promoting and maintaining international peace and security,” reads a communiqué from the Embassy of Tunisia in Brasília. “This vote highlights the strong support [Tunisia] enjoys, especially so in African and Arab groups, which have confirmed their support to this candidacy since the 2014 Arab Summit and the African Summit in July 2018,” it adds.
The Embassy also notes that the vote comes in the wake of Tunisia’s hosting of the latest Arab Summit in March 2019, and its being picked to host the Summit of Francophone Countries for the first time in 2020.
In the Council, the Embassy said, Tunisia will support “collective actions to achieve international peace and security, the wellbeing and sustainable development of the peoples of the world, and the building of bridges of trust, dialogue, solidarity and cooperation among all member states. It will also ensure the championing of shared stances on the numerous Arab and African issues with the Security Council, chief among them the just Palestinian cause,” the communiqué asserts.
The country’s priorities will be “conflict prevention, the enhancement of the Security Council’s commitment to finding peaceful solutions to ongoing conflicts, and the promotion of women and young people,” as well as “prioritizing the United Nations’ role in fighting terrorism and extremism, so as to increase the effectiveness of operations for peace and cooperation for development.”
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
