“We must ask whether the current United Nations is really fulfilling the role it was originally expected to play,” said the Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba.  He pointed out that, while responsibility for the UN’s most important function — to maintain international peace and security — rests with the Security Council, “in many critical cases, the Council was unable to take the necessary decisions due to the veto power granted to the permanent members”.  Highlighting “innovative mechanisms” to address this issue, including the Assembly resolution, “Uniting for Peace”, passed in 1950 to empower it to take action, and the requirement since 2022 that a permanent member of the Council who exercises the veto is requested to speak at the Assembly, he said, “Despite these efforts, the Security Council is still not functioning effectively,” adding: “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is the most obvious example.”

Stating that the situation “shakes the very foundation of the international order”, with Council resolutions vetoed and not adopted, and Moscow’s aggression against Kyiv continuing, he said, “The veto was an unavoidable safety valve designed to prevent direct conflict between the major powers.  However, the inherent limitations of the UN are clear.”  In this context, he underscored the need to decisively implement Council reform, making it more representative without losing its effectiveness.  Turning to the situation in Palestine, which has reached an alarming juncture undermining the foundation of the two-State solution, he condemned and called for the immediate cessation of the expansion of Israeli ground operations in Gaza, which further aggravate the dire humanitarian crisis there.  “I feel strongly indignant by the statements made by senior Israeli government officials that appear to categorically reject the very notion of Palestinian state-building,” he said, adding:  “For our country, the question is not whether to recognize a Palestinian state, but when.”

Turning to the issue of nuclear weapons, with a permanent member of the Security Council “openly making nuclear threats”, he voiced concern that the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons may be lowered. Addressing calls for his country to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapon, “as the only country to have suffered atomic bombings”, he stated that to maintain a world without nuclear war and realize a world without nuclear weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty is “the most effective and realistic framework” to this end.  “The nuclear catastrophe our nation has experienced must never be repeated,” he said, quoting from a short Japanese poem by Shinoe Shoda, inscribed on “the Monument of the A bombed Teachers and Students of National Elementary Schools” near the epicentre of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, which describes the grief of a teacher who was unable to protect her students from the blazing fire.

“It is North Korea that is now challenging these efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons head-on,” he continued, urging full implementation of the numerous Council resolutions aimed at the complete denuclearization of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  Also citing the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang, he renewed his call for dialogue, and resolving outstanding issues, in line with the Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration.