United Nations published this video item, entitled “Estonia’s membership in the UN Security Council 2020 -2021 – Press Conference (14 January 2022)” – below is their description.
Taking stock of Estonia’s two-year term as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Ambassador Sven Jürgenson today (14 Jan) said, “there’s no difference whether you are big or small. You are a member of the Council,” noting that there were “very few occasions when the permanent members were doing their own thing.”
Jürgenson told journalists in New York that “there was not a moment when I felt like I am a younger brother or that somebody was looking down at me, and secondly, 99 percent or even more of the work of the Council was actual 15 really, it was not five plus ten.”
Estonia’s two-year term, which concluded at the end of December, was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which brough about changes in the Council’s working methods as many meetings had to be conducted via Video Teleconference (VTC).
Jürgenson said, “some of the things, of course, on VTC are easier to organize, you know, it’s easier to get high-level participation that we had for our informal meetings, like 40 foreign ministers and so on. But at the same time, the big problem that I find is that – I sometimes say that diplomacy is actually a contact sport, and it was clearly visible how this contact was lacking.”
Asked about the divisions and lack of consensus in the Council, the Estonian Ambassador said, “looking at the conflicts that I said are not being solved, you could say that the Council has failed, we haven’t managed doing anything, but at the same time, it might also be possible that without the Council they would be much, much worse.”
On the Russia-Ukraine situation he said, “what Putin is trying to do, what he wants to get is kind of understandable. What he is trying to do, not so much. You know, whether there will be war, nobody knows. I would personally say I doubt it. Because everybody knows how much there is to lose, you know, including Putin.”
Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) replaced Estonia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia, Niger, and Vietnam, which completed their two-year term and will serve on the Council during the 2022-2023 period,
The Council also includes India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, and Norway, serving the 2021-2022 term, and the United States, United Kingdom, Russian Federation, China, and France as the five permanent members.
United Nations YouTube Channel
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