HRN has submitted a statement to the Summit of the Future, which was held on September 22 and 23 at the United Nations headquarters in New York City as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Charter.
Below is the statement we have submitted.
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The UN was created almost 80 years ago to ensure that future generations do not face the same existential crises as our ancestors did during WWII. Yet today, our world is continuously threatened by nuclear war, genocide, and climate change.
HRN believes that the system in which the nuclear weapon states, the P5, monopolize veto power in the Security Council has proven to be unequal, unsustainable, and undemocratic. Rather than make us young people feel more secure, the politicized and biased actions of the P5 is making our future less secure.
More than 40,000 civilians have been massacred in Gaza in the past year. The ICJ found that this amounts to plausible genocide, and has ordered Israel to cease further military action, yet indiscriminate killings of civilians continue. The UNSC was created to prevent another genocide from happening again; HRN believes this is the moment to act.
Yet the veto has been weaponized and politicized to prevent UN action.
Similarly, the people of Ukraine, who have been trying to defend their country against aggression for the two years, are in constant danger of nuclear annihilation. Nuclear weapons do nothing to deter war and are an evil that evokes catastrophic threats to the future survival of humanity. The UNSC was created to prevent territorial aggression and such existential threats from happening again; HRN believes this is the moment to act.
Yet again, the veto has been weaponized and politicized to UN prevent action.
HRN calls for a reform of the UN Security Council to ensure that all states, including the P5, respect core principles of international human rights and humanitarian law
A new collective security regime must be established in which the UN General Assembly, the UN’s democratic institution, plays a stronger role to protect people’s lives.
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