Subway
Singapore Permanent Mission to the United Nations & United Nations Headquaters
UN is an important platform to stimulate conversations and communications between and among countries to strive to resolve conflicts and bring light upon certain issues such as LGBT rights. It has been highly complimented for being an international community of great diversiry where nations of various geographical locations, sizes, religions and more are being presented at this global level. Countries are being represented by their respective delegates to discuss issues and bring forward certain resolutions which are parallel to the UN objectives. UN has till now contributed greatly to our global society in terms of funding for education in the less developed countries, bringing better standards of life and increasing health conditions in the less well-off areas, and bringing countries together to help in peacekeeping especially since the terrorist groups have seen increase in their areas of authority and fear from the people. Very recent paris terrorist attacks is yet a showcase of such obvious issues in our society today that is really hard to contained and yet has to be taken care of. As UN does not have any troops or soldiers in its power, hence it cannot really deploy people to help fight war there, this is instead done by the NATO. However, UN does help in terms of providing humanitarian aid and the long debatable issue of accepting refugees. Plenty of organizations that work together with the UN has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in peacekeeping in the world. The UN has been engaged in many aspects of the community- education, health, gender inequality, terrorism and etc and hence is a considerable diverse platform and helps people from all walks of lives facing different problems. Nonetheless, there has been many calls to restructure the UN and how it works because of its relative ineffiency in solving problemd especially in the UNSC. Every country supposedly has a vote and whether a resolution is pushed through is determined by the collective votes of the majority (two-thirds or simple). Delegates go around and try convincing various countries to vote for their stand so that their arguement passes through. Yet in the UNSC, the 5 veto powers, China, Russia, France, UK and US, also known as the P5, holds great influence, much greater power than the other non-permanent members in the security council. When the security council was formed in 1945, the main allies of the victors of the WWII come together and decided that these five member states would be the permanent members of UNSC, which means they are unchangeable. While certain critics say that the non-permanent members rotate for every two years and are carefully elected by the General Assembly made up of all 193 member states, UNSC is still being targetted at unfairness and evident inefficiency with the policy that even just one of the P5 chooses to oppose a particular resolution, it cannot be passed through even though it may have earned the majority vote. Time and efforts are being put in to persuade the P5 instead of really resolving world crisis, bringing about such controversy. Also, only the UNSC is legally binding the others are not which means countries can don't follow what they don't want to if they don-t ratify an agreement which makes it yet again to say in a rather crude way, useless. Still, we believe that the UN is an indispensable piece of the global community because it is one that allows multilateral ties and in spite of its inefficiency, is a rather useful stage for countries to talk about issues and their take on them. Without the UN, everyone will only be concerned about their national interests which yes, they are still now but the UN allows the people who need support to present their viewpoints to other states and encouraging them to join in their cause.
Singapore has joined the UN as one of its 193 member states since the year of uts independence, 1965. Throughout this 50 years, Singapore has been an active contributor as well as a benefactor of UN organisation. Of the 6 organs of UN, Singapore has proudly served the security council as a non-permanent member from year 2010 to 2012. The UN upholds "one country one vote", which ensures that even small countries in Singapore can be represented and have their interests protected in the UN, in the case where UN might want to pass international laws that deviate from Singapore's rule of law. Singapore has also pushed for 'World Toilet Day', which may lead some to snigger at that thought, but it takes pride in the fact that we push for what we believe in. We believe that the absence of a clean toilet will yield its repercussions if we do not take action. For example, the theme of last year's World Toilet Day campaign was "Women, Girls, Toilet" which seeks to advocate the provision of toilet for women especially important for women in India and some other countries as toilets can help to reduce rape rate.
Of all the overwhelmimg information presented to us during the sharing, we had a better understanding of some challenges in facing these agenda. Singapore had a more difficult time retaining the law of death penalty for drug possession, as many countries in the EU (European Union) feel strongly against the idea of the lack of 2nd chance. Singapore remained firm on its belief that such a law can threaten the safety of our country. So if it were you, would you be for death penalty too? These are definitely tough questions to answer, but they opened our eyes to how the UN works as well as the impact of UN operation on smaller countries like us.
We were presented a vividly painted image of Singapore through the speaker Mr Joseph Teo, who spoke to us about how Singapore presents herself on the global stage. Firstly, we definitely take pride in our independence - the fact that we do not require aid from other countries. We also take pride in going the extra mile of teaching some developing nations how to fish and not merely offering them fish. We offer educational opportunities to developing countries. While we do not measure how effective such an approach is, Singapore is indeed courageous in trying things that go against the international norm. I am sure Singapore will continue to be steadfast in beliefs, decisive in action and proud to be in UN.