VIGOROUS UN REFORM NEEDED TO FACE GLOBAL CHALLENGES, SAYS MONGOLIAN LEADER

27 September - Mongolia called for vigorous reform of the United Nations today so that it can play its essential role in resolving global challenges, from the world financial crisis to peace and security to climate change.

Addressing the General Assembly at its annual session, Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold noted that many observers argue that the economic crisis shows that neo-liberalism, with the premise that markets are self-correcting and regulation is unnecessary, is flawed, and maintain that the State can deliberately intervene in the economy and even correct market-based incentives in such a way as to promote inclusive growth and sustainable development.

“The United Nations, as a generator of new and innovative ideas and developmental notions, that have changed the world in the past, is in our view the right place to intimately engage itself into the nurturing of such fundamental concepts that could have a huge impact on development policies and prospects of its Member States,” he declared.

“It has been widely recognized that today's global challenges require global solutions. The underlying principles and characteristics of the UN make it an indispensable part in the evolving global governance system,” he added, calling it a unique forum to synthesize solutions to global problems ranging from nuclear weapons to climate change, development to human rights. Yet there are challenges that have found or are seeking to find their solutions outside the UN.

“The legitimate question would be why?” he said. “There might be many factors at play, many facets to cover to find an easy answer to that. But what has emerged as obvious from our deliberations is the fact that for the UN to reaffirm its central role in global governance it has to be efficient, its reform has to be vigorously pursued.

“Revitalization of the General Assembly must be further pursued so that our deliberations and decisions have more practical and meaningful impact on the lives of people in whose name we act here.'

Mr. Batbold called for enhancing the role of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in global economic decision-making, and expanding the Security Council to make it more representative of the current world's reality. Mongolia stands for a just and equitable enlargement of the Council by increasing the number of permanent and non-permanent members, he said.

Turning to climate change, he noted that in less than 20 years more than 70 per cent of Mongolia had been affected by desertification, with hundreds of rivers, springs and lakes drying up. Yet, climate change adaptation and mitigation techniques have yet to be fully identified and introduced.