By: The Republic of Albania

Albania is submitting this Letter to the Editor to the AMUN Chronicle in tandem with our fellow members on the Security Council issuing press releases on the same issue. Albania believes it vital to underscore the need for cooperation, and offers our thoughts on the matter to the international community. 

Saturday 19 November, the Security Council met to discuss matters of international security. What started out as a meeting of dignitaries soon devolved into a stonewalling of international discourse. 

After some maneuvering, the Russian Federation deployed use of a double veto, rendering all of the Council’s actions substantive and necessitating the continual consent of P5 members on all matters, no matter their significance. Most other council members voted in confusion, with a lack of understanding of the rules—further complicated by an absence of adequate explanation—all to the benefit of no one but few members of the P5. This confusion itself represents a greater threat to international security: the impunity select countries feel in breaching international law.  

Albania has been prideful of our transition to a more sustainable and inclusive society. We have done this through consoling our communist past with a more liberal, free-thinking future, one which invites international cooperation and dialogue; it benefits no one, no one at all, to begin discussions by throwing away the table.

Albania’s agenda on the Security Council revolves around international law and cooperation: protecting women and girls impacted by violence, the vindication of fundamental human rights, and the urgent need to cooperate and solve the current climate crisis. At home, the climate crisis has challenged our own energy and agricultural demands. Abroad, low-lying countries like Mauritius will be lost beneath rising sea levels, forever buried beneath the waves. The crisis is very real, and action must be taken. 

It cannot be set as a standard that, when international security involves members of the P5, the Security Council is neutered of its capacity to simply discuss matters of importance. It cannot be set as a standard of international law and liberal values that countries are enabled to dishonor the very system of which they have signed on to support. It cannot be the norm that countries are enabled to so explicitly deceive their international colleagues, and to trip up discussions of consequence for simple amusement.

We come to this UN session with large issues to fix. Our delegations represent a diverse world with diverse problems; this aversion to work together in good faith will condemn our entire planet. Albania believes the work of the Security Council is integral in achieving international prosperity, but we are also fully conscious of the fact that it is meaningless without the support of its permanent members.