NEW DELHI: Comparing the United Nations with an "old company", external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Sunday called the global agency a "bystander", which had failed to keep up with the times and did not adequately respond to global crises , from Covid to the current conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia.
"The UN is like an old company, not keeping up with the market, but occupying the space. When it's behind the times, in this world when you have innovation and startups, they would like to mainstream that into the market and see if the principal players are in tune with these trends. But when they are not, countries, as companies do, start doing things on their own. So, what you have today is a UN, at the end of the day, however suboptimal it is in its functioning, it is the only multilateral game in town. When it doesn't step up on key issues, countries figure out their own ways of doing it," he said at the Kautilya Economic Conclave.
He cited the example of Covid, arguing that the UN did not fully lead the international response to the pandemic, and also conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia to make his point.
"Where is UN on them? Essentially a bystander. What is happening."
He pointed to the emergence of Quad to deal with challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the India-Middle East Europe Economic Corridor for connectivity, and bodies like the International Solar Alliance as organisations that had come up outside the UN system to tackle specific problems.
"UN will continue, but increasingly there is the non-UN space which is the active space and it's telling on the UN," the external affairs minister said.
For several years, India has been seeking reforms of multilateral bodies, including the UN, to reflect the new global order, with the external affairs minister earlier this year suggesting that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were "short-sighted" in their approach and were holding up the revamp.
At the event, the minister also said several of the trends seen in the US will intensify irrespective of the outcome of next month's US presidential elections, as America had made a shift in its economic outlook and geopolitically.
"Look back over the last five years, how many of the policies which in 2020 people thought were the Trump administration's policies actually not just carried over by Biden but they doubled down on those policies... there are very deep shifts happening... America which actually has made a shift, geopolitically and in its economic outlook, and has come to the conclusion that the order which it devised many years ago no longer works to its benefit to that degree," he said.
Asked about his upcoming visit to Pakistan to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Jaishankar once again ruled out the possibility of any bilateral dialogue with Pakistan.
"I am going there for a certain job, a certain responsibility. And, I take my responsibilities seriously. So, I am going there to represent India at the SCO meeting, and that is what I am going to do," he said.
"The UN is like an old company, not keeping up with the market, but occupying the space. When it's behind the times, in this world when you have innovation and startups, they would like to mainstream that into the market and see if the principal players are in tune with these trends. But when they are not, countries, as companies do, start doing things on their own. So, what you have today is a UN, at the end of the day, however suboptimal it is in its functioning, it is the only multilateral game in town. When it doesn't step up on key issues, countries figure out their own ways of doing it," he said at the Kautilya Economic Conclave.
He cited the example of Covid, arguing that the UN did not fully lead the international response to the pandemic, and also conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia to make his point.
"Where is UN on them? Essentially a bystander. What is happening."
He pointed to the emergence of Quad to deal with challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the India-Middle East Europe Economic Corridor for connectivity, and bodies like the International Solar Alliance as organisations that had come up outside the UN system to tackle specific problems.
"UN will continue, but increasingly there is the non-UN space which is the active space and it's telling on the UN," the external affairs minister said.
For several years, India has been seeking reforms of multilateral bodies, including the UN, to reflect the new global order, with the external affairs minister earlier this year suggesting that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were "short-sighted" in their approach and were holding up the revamp.
At the event, the minister also said several of the trends seen in the US will intensify irrespective of the outcome of next month's US presidential elections, as America had made a shift in its economic outlook and geopolitically.
"Look back over the last five years, how many of the policies which in 2020 people thought were the Trump administration's policies actually not just carried over by Biden but they doubled down on those policies... there are very deep shifts happening... America which actually has made a shift, geopolitically and in its economic outlook, and has come to the conclusion that the order which it devised many years ago no longer works to its benefit to that degree," he said.
Asked about his upcoming visit to Pakistan to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Jaishankar once again ruled out the possibility of any bilateral dialogue with Pakistan.
"I am going there for a certain job, a certain responsibility. And, I take my responsibilities seriously. So, I am going there to represent India at the SCO meeting, and that is what I am going to do," he said.
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