South Africa will have a second opportunity this year to head the United Nations Security Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday.
South Africa, a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council, will take over the presidency of the UN-decision making body in April again, foreign affairs chief director for united nations affairs Xolisa Mabhongo said on Thursday.
The country would like to avoid contentious issues this time around and focus on developing what it calls ”highlights” of its previous term as Security Council president in March last year.
”We have been instrumental as a country to revitalise the discussions within the Security Council on how to enhance the relationship between the UN and the African Union,” Mabhongo said.
He said it was on South Africa’s request that the UN secretary general started working on a report on concrete steps that the world body could take to strengthen its relationship with regional organisations such as the AU.
That report was nearly completed and South Africa hoped it could be discussed during its tenure as Security Council president.
”It would be opportune that we should then try to get the Security Council to consider some of those recommendations [from the report] and perhaps take some action,” Mabhongo said.
In particular, the country hoped to see proposals on ways the UN could fund regional peacekeeping initiatives and how it could complement work done by regional mediators to avoid conflict.
Last year South Africa was criticised when it voted against allowing the Security Council to consider a resolution on human rights issues in Burma, whose government is widely seen as one of the most repressive on earth.
South Africa’s view was that the issue should have been taken up by the UN Human Rights Council as the Security Council was not the right UN institution to discuss the matter.
During its presidency it also said it would oppose requests to brief the Security Council on the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe.
It later changed its stance, but only after dismissing the briefing as a minor event that did not belong on the council’s agenda.
It also made a counter-proposal to that of the five permanent Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany — who proposed sanctions to rein in Iran’s nuclear programme.
The major powers agreed on an arms embargo, freezing of assets and other sanctions against Iran, but South Africa proposed dropping the arms and financial sanctions and placing a 90-day ”time-out” on other punishments.
It later voted along with the other Security Council members to impose limited targeted economic and trade sanctions against Iran. — Sapa