Training for budding nuclear engineers launched in Saudi Arabia

NEW YORK CITY: The global order is in one of the most dangerous phases it has experienced since the end of the Cold War, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the UN said on Tuesday.

Abdulaziz Alwasil blamed this on “some major powers” putting their own interests ahead of the principles on which the UN was built, as a result of which the organization is unable to uphold its responsibilities because its agencies and mechanisms are “shackled with procedures and rules that allow a small number of states to control the destiny of helpless peoples and countries.”

Speaking during a meeting of the Security Council, Alwasil said: “The blatant violations being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip are a prime example of the inaction of the current global order and the failure of its most important body, tasked with the maintenance of international peace and security, to fulfill the hopes that have been pinned on it.”

This, he added, has allowed “the Israeli war machine to kill and injure thousands of Palestinians without accountability or deterrence, so that the world stands witness to the worst human catastrophe of our modern history.”

In recent years the world has seen a growing number of increasingly severe crises, Alwasil said, and so it is more important than ever that a new multilateral system be established that is more fair, more cohesive, and has more effective mechanisms to help establish peace and security.

“We’re currently witnessing a phase of a transition to a new multilateral global order, whose features have not solidified yet,” he added.

“This requires us all to enhance our joint and global efforts to protect ourselves from the dangers of conflict and war, especially as we see increasing signs of fragmentation in policy and economics and digitization, and as we see increasing fears of nuclear annihilation and world war three.”

The pursuit of peace and security is the founding principle of the UN, Alwasil said, and he vowed that Saudi Arabia would continue to strive to achieve “the goals or purposes of the United Nations and the maintenance of international peace and security.”

He underscored the important need for “comprehensive reforms” of the Security Council and other UN bodies to better enable them “to perform their duties effectively and in accordance with the principles of the organization, international law and international humanitarian law.”

More than 50 states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, attended the high-level Security Council open debate, titled “Multilateral cooperation in the interest of a more just, democratic and sustainable world order.”