By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
At the start of Guyana’s term on the United Nations Security Council, its distinguished representative, Ms Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, one of the few indigenous persons ever to head a delegation on the Council, declared a people-oriented approach to Guyana’s tenure on the Council. This was an historic pronouncement, in keeping with the benevolent pulse of the Guyanese people.
Current events on the global stage will call for the application of this people-oriented approach, notably the on-going conflict in Gaza-Israel, which has seen terrible violence on both sides. In its history, the UN Security Council has had a rich practice of exercising a protective function but it has, at the same time, expressly declared ‘the primacy of politics’ as governing its overall approach. We have traced this bifurcated approach in a book coming out soon, The Protective Function of the UN Security Council.