Dato Erywan Pehin Yusof, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brunei Darussalam, reaffirmed his country’s commitment to the UN, adding “it is the only forum where every nation, large or small, developed or developing, can stand and speak as equals”.  The Organisation’s action on climate change and role in shaping international law have shaped his country’s path.  His country works with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to promote peace in the region, he said, as well as with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Belt and Road initiative. “Guided by the principles of the United Nations, even a small country like Brunei Darussalam has found its place in the world,” he continued, citing its participation in humanitarian and peacekeeping missions and in Aceh, Indonesia and Mindinao, Philippines.

However, the Security Council is hamstrung by the veto.  “Nowhere is this failure more glaring, more tragic than in Palestine,” he stressed, adding that such inaction undermines “the very foundations of the UN”. He called for urgent reform to the organ — with the possible elimination of the veto altogether.  Humanity made a vow of “never again” eighty years ago, but “the suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people bears chilling resemblance to the last century’s darkest chapters […] marked by the Holocaust, by ethnic cleansing, and by the mass uprooting of entire populations during the Second World War,” he observed.  To ignore it is to be complicit. “‘Never again’ does not belong to one people alone,” he stressed.

Indeed, the occupying regime’s “relentless pursuit of expansionism through annexation, illegal settlements and the systematic erasure of Palestine echoes the ideologies of the past, such as the ‘Greater Germanic Reich’”, he continued, voicing full support for the New York Declaration and underlining that he is speaking “not out of hatred, but hope for a future where both Palestinians and Israelis live in peace.”  “Better together” is not just a slogan.  It is a responsibility, he said.  “For small States, multilateralism is not an option.  It is our lifeline.  As we confront climate change, pandemics, inequality, and conflict, no nation can stand alone,” he concluded.