India’s permanent contribution to the agenda of the international community and that of the United Nations (U.N.) is of “enormous importance for us”, the U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has said, as he pointed to a “positive mega trend” of the increasingly enhanced roles of developing economies such as India in the world.
These remarks were made by Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who will be heading to New Delhi to attend the India AI Impact Summit, the first-ever summit on Artificial Intelligence hosted in the Global South.
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“India became an extremely important leader in the discussions on all aspects of the activities of the U.N., in peace and security, sustainable development, where I remember the G20 presided by India, the very important decisions that were taken there,” Mr. Guterres told PTI in an exclusive interview here.
“And also in human rights as a democratic country in a world where, unfortunately, we see democracy in trouble in so many parts of the world,” Mr. Guterres said.
To a question on India’s role at the U.N., Mr. Guterres said “first of all, we have a huge debt of gratitude to India” for its presence in U.N. Peacekeeping, noting that currently about 5,000 Indian women and men are deployed in peacekeeping missions across the world.
He also highlighted the “first entirely female police unit in peacekeeping” from India, which he described as “something remarkable”, given that gender equality is a “fundamental objective” for the U.N.
India, which has traditionally been among the largest troop contributors to U.N. Peacekeeping, was the first country to deploy the all-women Formed Police Unit to Liberia in 2007, a landmark in the global organisation’s history.
“This permanent contribution of India to the agenda of the international community, which is the agenda of the U.N., is of enormous importance for us,” Mr. Guterres said in the interview ahead of his visit to India.
Mr. Guterres, whose tenure as the U.N. chief will end this year, highlighted some “positive mega trends” emerging in the world at a time of growing conflicts and increasing inequalities.
“My message is that there are many reasons to be, of course, worried. We have seen conflicts multiplying, injustices, inequalities increasing, poverty and hunger not being solved in the world. We have seen terrorism developing and becoming a nightmare in different parts of the world. So there are many reasons to be worried but there are a few positive mega trends,” he said.
Mr. Guterres stressed that one of the “most important mega trends” has to do with the role of countries and economies such as India.
“Every single day, the group of developed countries — G7 and similar countries — they represent a smaller share of the global economy than the day before. And every single day, the emerging economies, in which India is a fundamental pillar, represent a larger share of the world economy than the day before,” he said.
“And this happens every single day, which means that this mega trend will, in time, contribute to a world in which justice, equality, and based on justice, equality, peace will have much more conditions to prevail,” he said.
Mr. Guterres has previously emphasised that global structures and institutions must reflect the complexity and opportunity of these “new times and realities”.
Against this backdrop, he has called for reform of the U.N. Security Council but noted that it is important to distinguish the powerful 15-nation organ from the rest of the United Nations.
“The U.N. is not the Security Council,” he said, adding that the U.N. is fully represented in the 193-member General Assembly, where all states have the same weight.
“Of course, it’s the fact that the Security Council has not only been unfair in its composition but ineffective in its action. That facilitates some easy criticism of the United Nations.” He voiced full support for the U.N., underscoring that he is proud of the work the world organisation does.
“I’m extremely proud of the extraordinary work that the United Nations is doing in humanitarian aid around the world, in support of sustainable development around the world, in leading the extremely important campaign for climate action and in developing more and more new areas in relation to what we were doing traditionally,” he said.
“The United Nations has been a strong ally of developing countries fighting for reform of the international financial architecture to make sure that developing countries have a much stronger participation and voice in the international financial institutions,” he said.
“I am very proud to work with the U.N. and very proud of my colleagues who do humanitarian aid in the most remote and dangerous areas of the world, and very proud of the peacekeepers, like the Indian peacekeepers, that protect people in very difficult circumstances, also in some very dangerous situations,” he said.
Asserting that the U.N. plays a “very important and positive role”, he said “our brand of the Sustainable Development Goals became a universal brand that all countries, and India has been leading in this dimension, are pursuing with determination.”
Mr. Guterres is scheduled to participate in the Summit’s opening ceremony, a plenary with Heads of State and Government, as well as a session on the role of science in international AI governance, his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
Mr. Guterres will have bilateral meetings with President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will meet with global and tech leaders attending the Summit, as well as with members of the International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.
Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Balaraman Ravindran, is among a global group of 40 distinguished experts named by Mr. Guterres to serve on the panel.
Mr. Guterres is also scheduled to take part in a roundtable organised by the U.N. to discuss renewable energy and energy transition.
“With India emerging as a global leader in renewable energy expansion, the discussion will bring together senior figures from industry, finance, policy and civil society to identify concrete steps to further accelerate renewable energy deployment, strengthen grids and storage, and mobilise investment at scale. This engagement is part of the Secretary-General’s continued efforts to advance a faster, fairer and more inclusive global energy transition, aligned with the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Dujarric said.
