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“I think his message will be India’s example of our own domestic development story,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish told PTI in an exclusive interview.
Modi is scheduled to arrive in the US Saturday for a three-day visit which will begin with the Quad Leaders’ Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Indian leader will then travel to New York where he will address a mega community event in Long Island on September 22, followed by his address to the UN’s Summit of the Future on September 23 before departing for India.
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Harish underlined that the Summit’s focus is also on the youth who are the future of the world.
“India, with 1.4 billion population, and majority of our population being young people, brings this message of our youth. When Prime Minister speaks, he brings a message of the youth of India to the whole world,” he said.
“How can we involve our youth and build their stake in the future? How can we involve them in governance processes? As the world’s largest democracy, I think there can be no better example than India, in the way in which we have empowered our youth to take part in political, economic and developmental processes, and be true partners in the nation’s development and growth,” he said.
The Summit of the Future, followed by the annual UN General Assembly high-level week, comes in the midst of the escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict and the Ukraine war, as well as longstanding challenges of climate change, inequality, and deep geopolitical divides.
Outlining India’s priorities and focus in the upcoming high-level 79th session of the UN General Assembly, Harish said that for the country, one of the the key issues will be how the onset of the COVID19 pandemic, the crises and wars thereafter derailed the world’s progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030.
“We have slipped, and the leaders recognise that,” he said, adding that associated with this is the issue of financing for development. “This has become a huge issue for countries as they face huge debt.” The ambassador said that the international architecture of multilateral institutions is “out of date” and one must think of ways to revitalise them.
“What is it that we can do to make them ready to face today’s challenges? This is not just limited to UN organisations, but also financial institutions and multilateral development banks,” he said.
Emphasis will also be made on new technologies of the future, and artificial intelligence.
“What is it we can do to ensure that the divides of an earlier era do not extend into these new technologies? How do we prevent further deepening of the digital haves and the have nots,” he said.
Another focus for India will be climate change and South-South cooperation.
“India has always been a champion of South-South cooperation,” Harish said, highlighting India’s motto of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – or the World is One Family.
“We have never shirked in making available whatever we have achieved, the kind of digital platforms, technologies we have harnessed to make it available to our friends in the Global South. We have not patented them. We have put it in the open domain as open source for them to be able to use,” Harish added.
He said terrorism remains a significant issue for India. which requires international cooperation. “We and our partners seek to have a concerted move to countering terrorism and financing for terrorism.” He also noted that the whole architecture of peace and security needs a “reboot.” “We look for a reformed United Nations and also the international financial architecture to be fit for purpose for the new era… We want a reform process that is time-bound, text-based and purposeful,” he said.
UN officials have said that the Pact of the Future offers “groundbreaking” language on the long-pending Security Council reforms, including enlarging the “Security Council in order to be more representative of the current UN membership and reflective of the realities of the contemporary world.” Harish referred to remarks by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who has said: “We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents.”