India’s flag will be installed at the United Nations Security Council stakeout on Monday as the country begins its two-year tenure as a non-permanent member of the powerful UN body. Flags of the five new incoming non-permanent members will be installed at the stakeout during a special ceremony on January 4, the first official working day of 2021. India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador T S Tirumurti will install the tricolour and is expected to make brief remarks at the ceremony. Along with India, the incoming UNSC members are Norway, Kenya, Ireland and Mexico. They will join non-permanent members Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam and the five permanent members China, France, Russia, the UK and the US.
“As the largest democracy…we will be promoting very fundamental values like democracy, human rights and development,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti told PTI. India’s message will also be to ensure “how do we let diversity flourish in a united framework, which is in many ways the United Nations itself. This is something which India as a country, as what we stand for” will take to the Council. Tirumurti had said India will “definitely” emphasize a greater need for cooperation in the Council, which should not be a place where “because of any paralysis of decision making, urgent requirements don’t get properly focused. We would like to have a more cooperative structure in which we genuinely lookout and find solutions and go beyond the rhetoric.” India will also underscore the importance of respect for rule of law and international law.
“Like the changing of the guards, it is the changing of flags from outgoing to the newly elected members. This solemn ceremony serves the purpose of affirming and respecting the new members with the recognition they deserve,” Kazakhstan’s former Permanent Representative to the UN Kairat Umarov had said during the 2019 ceremony. The ceremony was unanimously confirmed by all 15 UNSC members to become an annual tradition of the Security Council, Umarov had said.
