Chance for Pakistan to raise its UN profile

PAKISTAN’s recent election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) with the overwhelming support of the community of nations would have bewildered Indians had it been widely reported in this country.

Next year, the counter-terrorism document will be back at the UN for a biennial review, the text of which will be of critical importance to India.

With India caught up in the Lok Sabha election results and their far-reaching repercussions, the news of Pakistan’s seat at the UN high table got little traction in the country. The election, in which 182 of the UN’s 193 member countries voted in favour of Pakistan, offers a major foreign policy challenge for the Narendra Modi government during its third term.

With the election of Pakistan and Somalia, which will join the UNSC on January 1, 2025, for a two-year term, the UN’s highest decision-making body will have five members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). That is half the number of elected members of the only UN arm whose decisions are legally binding on the entire world. It is another matter that such decisions are often pre-empted by a veto, exercised by one or more of the five permanent members of the Council, the P-5, also known as the Big Five. Some UN member countries defy the decisions of the UNSC. The Council can impose sanctions on errant states, and in extreme cases, authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.

None of the above means that India faces any imminent diplomatic threat merely because the UNSC doors are now open to Islamabad. Threat, no. Challenge, yes. Therefore, India cannot be complacent. To start with, the post of India’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York is vacant. The Pakistani counterpart is the forbidding and redoubtable Ambassador Munir Akram, who has been holding the post for the past almost five years. He did the same job earlier for six years from 2002. It was Akram whose covert diplomacy nearly succeeded in getting Kashmir on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Commission in 1994. The following year, he was formally appointed Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva and remained on this post for seven years. So, the new government must immediately appoint a successor to Permanent Representative Ruchira Kamboj, who retired in the midst of the Lok Sabha election campaign.

Next year, the counter-terrorism document will be back at the UN for its biennial review, the text of which will be of critical importance to India as a victim of cross-border terrorism. A universally acceptable definition of terrorism has eluded the UN in the General Assembly because of recalcitrant states like Pakistan, which has used terror for many decades as an instrument of state policy. Together with the dubious presence of Somalia at the epochal horseshoe table, the influence of the duo could spill over to the General Assembly and corrupt the counter-terrorism document during its review.

Another risk which India will have to guard against is the possibility — indeed, likelihood — that the five Security Council members belonging to the OIC will together work to list an Indian as a UN-designated terrorist. They will obviously look for a Hindu to be listed as a terrorist under the Security Council’s famous Resolution 1267. Adopted in 1999, this resolution’s most notorious designee hitherto was Osama bin Laden. A Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi is potential fodder for the OIC in this objective. A lot will depend on how the new Modi government behaves at home during the remainder of 2024 and next year.

Ambassador Akram is widely known in Turtle Bay, the site of the UN headquarters, to be still nursing his hurt over India’s successful drive — jointly with the US — in listing Abdul Rehman Makki as a ‘global terrorist’ via a Sanctions Committee set up through Resolution 1267. Pakistan’s hurt was compounded by the designation’s description that Makki was responsible for terror acts in Jammu and Kashmir. He is the brother-in-law of Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed.

After India abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, Pakistan managed only to have ‘consultations’ in the Security Council. Such a procedure meant in-camera discussions among Council members, of which there is no record and nothing at all in the public domain. Once Pakistan enters the Security Council with the support of four other OIC members, it may attempt to move the needle on Kashmir in its favour. This is most likely to be done via ‘open consultations’ in the Council. Unlike the earlier procedure, this would mean someone from the Council will brief the media and the public about the consultations and their outcome. On occasion, the UN Secretariat may also brief the world on those discussions. The danger, from India’s point of view, is that the Kashmir issue will be squarely on focus at the UN while such manoeuvres are ongoing. A lot will depend, of course, on the P-5, who ultimately have the whip hand in the Council.

India and Pakistan have cohabited in the Council before without obstructing the work of the 15-member body. The last time they did it was in 2012. Two things have changed since then. Pakistan’s Mission to the UN was then led by the erudite Hussain Haroon, the scion of the Haroon family, which owns the Dawn Media Group, among other assets. He never frothed at the mouth against India, unlike many Pakistani career diplomats. The second change is that the world was very different and less complex in 2012.

Opportunities for covert and overt confrontation among rivals and enemies have unfortunately increased at the UN in recent years. Therefore, Pakistan has more opportunities to internationalise bilateral issues with India. For example, food security is at the front and centre of the UN agenda, especially after the war began in Ukraine. At the horseshoe table, Pakistan could well bring up its gripes about the Indus Water Treaty as an issue of its food security, notwithstanding this treaty’s robust mechanisms to resolve disputes. They may not succeed in their mischief, but Islamabad is not beyond trying. After Europe lurched to the right in the European Parliament elections, Islamophobia will very much figure in UN deliberations. It is a godsend for OIC diplomats in the Security Council as their numbers swell. Pakistan will make the most of it to advance its UN profile.