Guyana calls for permanent UN Security Council seats for Africa, Latin America

(Kaieteur News) – Calling for a sweeping overhaul of global governance, President Irfaan Ali delivered a ringing defence of multilateralism at the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, urging world leaders to transform the UN from a “monument to the past” into an “instrument for the future.”

At the heart of the Guyanese Head of State’s address was an urgent demand to reform the UN Security Council to reflect 21st-century geopolitical realities rather than the post-World War II power dynamics of 1945. Addressing world leaders, President Ali emphasised that a modernised body must embrace the world’s emerging multipolarity, specifically calling for permanent representation for Africa, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. He cautioned that the current framework, which excludes entire regions from permanent decision-making power, can no longer sustain a just international order.

President Ali framed the present crisis confronting global diplomacy as an opportunity for structural rebirth. “If the United Nations is to remain humanity’s best hope, then this is not the hour to retreat from multilateralism,” Ali declared. “This is the hour to reclaim and to renew it. For it is in times such as these, when wars rage across borders, when the shadow of existential threats falls across the future of human civilisation, when the old certainties are dissolving before our eyes, that multilateralism must rise.”