Recommendation to the Council on the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly

The Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted the report by Eugen FREUND (S&D, AT) on a European Parliament recommendation to the Council on the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly

The EU and its Member States remain fully committed to multilateralism, global governance, the promotion of UN core values as an integral part of the EU’s external policy, and the three pillars of the UN system: (i) human rights, (ii) peace and security, (iii) development.

The EU’s global strategy reflects the level of today’s global challenges, which require a strong and more efficient UN and a deepening of cooperation at Member State level both within the EU and the UN.

Against this background, Members recommend the following to the Council:

Reform of the UN system, including reform of the Security Council

• to actively support the UN Secretary-General’s (UNSG) three pillar reform agenda with the aim of making the UN system truly coordinated, efficient, effective, integrated, transparent and accountable;
• to support reduced bureaucracy, simplified procedures and decentralised decision-making, with greater transparency and accountability on the missions and work of UN staff;
• to remind all UN Member States of their obligation to maintain their financial efforts to support all UN agencies and meet their commitments on development aid spending;
• to actively support the UNSG’s efforts in the implementation of the UN strategy on gender parity as an essential tool to ensure the equal representation of women in the UN system;
• to redouble efforts to reform the UNSC in particular, through a significant limitation or by regulating the use of the right to veto, notably in cases where there is evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which has been obstructing the decision-making process and through a change in the composition of its membership to better reflect today’s global order, inter alia through a permanent seat for the European Union;
• to call for the EU and its Member States to speak with one voice;
• to advocate the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) within the UN system in order to increase the democratic character, the democratic accountability and the transparency of global governance.

Peace and security

• to promote stronger commitments from Member States to peace and security both at international and internal level;
• to call on the UN to make peacekeeping operations more credible and transparent by establishing and reinforcing effective mechanisms to prevent possible abuses by UN personnel and to hold them accountable;
• to reiterate its unequivocal condemnation of terrorism and its full support for actions aimed at the defeat and eradication of terrorist organisations, in particular Daesh/ISIS, which pose a clear threat to regional and international security;
• to keep addressing the major security threats in the Sahel, Sahara, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa regions with a view to eradicating the terrorist threat caused by ISIL/Daesh and al-Qaeda affiliates and by Boko Haram or any other affiliated terrorist groups;
• to uphold the nuclear agreement between Iran and the Security Council Members plus Germany as an important success of international and, notably, EU diplomacy.

Non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament

• to systematically support all UN actions related to disarmament, confidence-building, non-proliferation and counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons by a state party or non-state actor;
• to work towards more effective action against the diversion of, and illicit trade in, weapons and ammunition, including small arms and light weapons, in particular by developing a weapons tracking system;
• to establish a legal framework on drones and armed robots in line with existing international humanitarian law to prevent this technology from being misused in illegal activities by state and non-state actors;

Human rights, democracy and the rule of law

• to urge all UN Member States to ratify and effectively implement all core UN human rights conventions, including the UN Convention Against Torture and the Optional Protocol thereto, the Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights establishing complaint and inquiry mechanisms, and to comply with the reporting obligations under these instruments and the commitment to cooperate in good faith with UN human rights mechanisms;
• to ensure that human rights reforms continue to be fully integrated within the UN’s three pillars of reform; to support mainstreaming of the human rights dimension in the work of the United Nations;
• to continue to advocate freedom of religion or belief;
• to call for greater efforts to protect the rights of religious and other minorities;
• to encourage all UN Member States to ensure that their citizens are able to be fully involved in political, social, and economic processes – including the freedom of religion or belief – without discrimination;
• to emphasise the importance of a free press and media in a healthy society, and the role of every citizen therein;
• to demand that greater efforts be made to prevent irregular migration and to fight people smuggling and human trafficking, in particular by combating criminal networks through timely and effective exchange of relevant intelligence.