This article was originally published in the media Globalnyt.
Denmark has taken over the presidency of the UN Security Council and will not just sit at the table with the bigwigs next month but will also lead the conversation – or whatever the debate is called at the moment.
On Monday, the program for March was approved by the 14 other members of the Security Council. It is a list of most of the world’s biggest security challenges.
Palestine and Israel, Sudan, DR Congo, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Golan and Afghanistan, are all on the program.
Many of them are there because they are simply on the program every month, because the council assesses the situation at least once a month.
Some are included, some are not
Other pressing issues, such as Ukraine, are not scheduled, but more Security Council meetings on Ukraine are expected in March, according to the media Security Council Report.
The Security Council Report does not speculate on why something is on the agenda or not.
The absence of Ukraine is not attributed to any particular motives. The absence of an agenda item that in one way or another deals with Women, Peace and Security, which is one of the Danish focus areas, is not mentioned.
On the other hand, the Danish signature event on future peace operations will take place, with Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen expected to lead the open debate, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres expected to participate.
UN peace operations are a Danish top priority (even though Denmark is no longer a permanent participant in them), and peace operations have been under intense pressure and subjected to harsh criticism in recent years.
Several major operations have been suspended, and no new ones have been added.
There is a major effort underway at the UN to adapt peacekeeping to today’s world and to make all peacekeeping work, from prevention to reconstruction, coherent.
The Middle East
One of the heated arguments in the Security Council are on “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.”
Two of them are planned. One is about the situation in Gaza, where the UN Senior Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Reconstruction, Sigrid Kaag, will brief the council members.
The other is the regular monthly meeting on the situation in the region – here the UN Interim Coordinator for the Peace Process will brief, also Sigrid Kaag.
Incidentally, it is also planned that the Minister of Foreign Affairs will chair a Security Council meeting on Syria – on the political and humanitarian situation in the country and on the status of chemical weapons.
On that point, we at Globalnyt can add that the person who was given responsibility for getting a large part of the Syrian chemical weapons shipped during the war was also Sigrid Kaag.
And then, for example, it is also in March that the annual meeting on cooperation between the UN Security Council and the EU is held.
Right now, the meeting schedule looks clear, but that is deceiving.
Despite all the problems between especially the large countries in the UN Security Council, the P5 as they are called, the five permanent members, the USA, Great Britain, France, China and Russia, but also a little squabbling between the 10 elected members, the Security Council is busy.
The agenda will quickly be filled with meetings, probably every single day.
Subdued Trump
On the other hand, not everything is as difficult as it seems. Especially not at the public meetings.
There are rules for everything at the open meetings, including how the country holding the presidency distributes the floor, addresses others and so on and so forth.
That is why a completely pacified President Trump was seen in his first term as president leading a heated discussion during a general assembly.
“As I thank the honorable member from Iran, I hereby pass the floor to …,” Trump said, having just been scolded by Iran’s foreign minister.
Whether the president will also allow himself to be silenced by the UN bureaucracy during this period, time will tell.
