Russia is one of five nations that have a veto power in the UN Security Council.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
The UN Deputy Secretary-General has told CNBC that there will be “lessons learned” from the war in Ukraine.
Speaks Wednesday following the release of the UN’s 2022 Funding for Sustainable Development Report“ Amina Mohammed said the crisis between Russia and Ukraine had been “a major shock to the system.”
Asked if the world could have done more to stop the war before it began, Mohammed said that “hindsight is 20-20 vision.”
“Of course there are things we could have done to stop the war, but it might be a lesson again when the Security Council, the leaders of the General Assembly will look back and say, ‘what could we have done,’ and make sure we prevent “The next war, the next pandemic.” It’s all things we learn. I think history tells us we’re not very good at learning when it comes to that, “she said.
“I think this was so unthinkable, unexpected, that we would have this kind of war in Europe, you know, 75 years later, I think it’s been a big shock to the system. So I hope the experience will find ways in which we can make ourselves more responsible for putting control and balance in that this never happens again and that we work towards peace. “
Mohammed, who has previously served as Nigeria’s environment minister, is also chairman of the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance, set up by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to look at the broader impact of the Ukraine war on “the world’s most vulnerable.”
Trip to Moscow
Guterres traveled to Moscow this week to meet with President Vladimir Putin for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine. He also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday in Kiev. Russia is one of five nations that have a veto power in the UN Security Council.
Guterres agreed with Putin on an evacuation route from the besieged city of Mariupol, but his trip came amid criticism that the UN Security Council has only managed to play a limited role during the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
In fact, Zelenskyy called for reform in a passionate speech to the Council in April. Mohammed said it was an issue that Security Council member states had “struggled with for a very long time”.
“And I think they will continue to address that, and there are talks and decisions that will be made to see how to do it better than we have been able to do, and to set control and balance to protect [U.N.] Charter. It is the most important. The charter that promises the people that we would not see a war again, as we did in World War II, “she said.
Mohammed became UN Secretary-General in 2017 and was reappointed in January 2022.
Asked how relevant she thinks an organization like the UN is to the world today, she said she understood frustration from outside towards it.
“If we did not have the UN today, we would have to recreate it tomorrow. It is the global town hall of our global village. We are so interconnected today that it is not going to change,” she said. .
“And we need a space where we can come and we can talk about the issues, human rights, our development, our conflicts, and you know, some days we will have a voice that is high and some days it is not very high. Some days we will move, some days we will not, but the most vulnerable countries need this space. “
‘Big financial gap’
Mohammed, who also chairs the UN Group on Sustainable Development, recently presented the “2022 report on funding for sustainable development” – a joint effort by the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, which includes more than sixty UN agencies and international organizations.
The report highlights a post-pandemic “large financial gap” in which poorer countries are unable to raise enough funds or borrow at an affordable price for investment, making them unable to invest in sustainable development or respond to crises.
“We are facing a kind of diversity of crises, the climate, the pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine, and the financial part of this is really just coming to demonstrate how the recommendations over the years are even more necessary today. And you I will see , that some of these recommendations speak to the framework around the financial divide that we see in the world today, “said Mohammed.
“So many of the recommendations are about access to finance, they are about better tax systems, they are about addressing illegal cash flows, but they are also about taking into account the debt that is rising and the crises that are exacerbating it.”
Mohammed originally joined the UN in 2012 as Special Adviser to former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and led the process of establishing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
She said she was “extremely concerned” about the current global financial situation and that “there is not enough recognition of the urgency and scale of the investments that need to be made right now.”