OSMAN SALEH MOHAMMED, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Eritrea, said that the futile attempts to impose a unipolar world order over the last 30 years — and the crises spawned by reviving defunct alliances and military blocs — are increasingly pushing the international community towards a much more perilous catastrophe.  Within this calamitous global reality, the African continent remains marginalized, compelled to shoulder the brunt of these destructive policies.  He stressed that in this context, the resistance movements unfolding in Africa — manifested in different variants — are the continuation of the struggle against colonialism.   They are defiant reactions to “modern slavery”, unremitting plunder, and domination. Another dimension often glossed over is that Al-Qaida, Da’esh, al-Shabaab and other offshoots are criminal enterprises “propped up and funded by the same forces of domination for political ends”, he stated.  They are ruthlessly instrumentalized to foment crises and provide plausible pretexts for military intervention. 

His country, he noted, has not been spared — and “I am not referring to the 1950s, in which Eritrea’s inalienable right to decolonization was sacrificed on the altar of geostrategic interests.”  More recently, the sanctions imposed on Eritrea from 2009 until 2018 marked another act of transgression and deceit, which requires full redress and accountability.  He pointed to vigorous and persistent resistance by the peoples of the world, which have deterred the emergence of the intended unipolar world order for global domination and hegemony.  The invigorated resistances mushrooming in parts of the world “indicate that we are on the cusp or threshold of a new reality,” he stressed.  The desired new global order will have to be accompanied by far-reaching structural changes in the world’s governance architecture, and various international and regional organizations.  However, he warned that “cosmetic and nominal measures” will only engender false hope and apathy in the peoples and countries of the world.

In tandem, he called for the United Nations to undergo the requisite structural changes — while the much-vaunted reform of the Security Council should not amount to nominal tampering, limited to increasing the number and geographical representation of new members.  The veto power and other institutional distortions — which incapacitate the Council from exercising its responsibilities with impartiality and objectivity — must be examined with the historical track-record as a template.  “Political horse-trading and the misuse of Council membership to advance narrow national interests are not compatible with the solemn responsibility that they are entrusted with,” he stated.  The criterion of membership should not be determined by mere political and economic clout or population size; rather, it must reflect the wide spectrum of Member States.