South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, criticized for his refusal to strongly condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, attacked Thursday the UN Security Council, which he considers “outdated” and not representative enough of emerging countries.
Pretoria maintains a neutral position on the Ukrainian issue, advocating for negotiations, the best solution to end the conflict according to it. Despite the wave of international condemnations, especially from the West, South Africa has so far refrained from voting on the two UN resolutions demanding that Russia immediately stop its military operations against Ukraine.
For the South African president, the Ukrainian conflict “has highlighted the inability of the UN Security Council to fulfill its mandate to maintain international peace and security.
Cyril Ramaphosa, who spoke before the diplomats of his country gathered in Pretoria, believes that the UN Council has so far been mainly instrumentalized by powerful nations to take catastrophic decisions. “The current composition of the UN Security Council is outdated and unrepresentative” of the world, and “disadvantages the emerging countries”, he stressed.
He called for reform to “democratize” it, so that it can “really fulfill its mandate and get out of the paralysis in which some member states” have installed it. “We must curb the unilateral actions of these countries to reshape the global political game,” he added, believing that it is “the entire architecture of peace and security of the UN” that “needs to be revised.
The UN General Assembly is due to vote on Thursday on a possible suspension of Russia from its Human Rights Council, a few days after the discovery in the vicinity of Kiev of the bodies of dozens of Ukrainians that the Russian army is accused of having massacred. Ramapohosa said his country supports the principle that “no UN member state should forcibly attack the territorial integrity of other states.”