F

oreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi was in New York this week to speak to the United Nations Security Council on what could be one of the last stops on her campaign for Indonesia to attain a non-permanent seat on that body.

During her speech in the Security Council Open Debate on Thursday (Friday Jakarta time), Retno said the main mandate of the council was to ensure that peace and security prevailed.

“Why is upholding international law important? Because it protects the weak and more importantly prevents ‘the mighty takes all’ approach,” Retno said at UN headquarters.

“It is only through development, guided by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, that we can build a peaceful world where people live in harmony.”

The open debate was attended by 12 ministerial officials, as well as representatives from 74 UN member countries.

In front of the 15 member states of the council, Retno cited the phrase “We the People of the United Nations” from the UN Charter, saying the UN represented and is responsible for all people and it was its responsibility to work in accordance with international law.

“The rightness of an issue should not depend on how the mighty determines it to be, in accordance to its own interests,” she said.

She said all members should be “part of the solution, not part of the problem” by implementing all the commitments and resolutions they had agreed to.

“One example is the resolutions on Palestine, of which many resolutions of the Security Council are not implemented,” she said.

The international community has criticized the United States for, among other things, failing to comply with UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine when it relocated its embassy to Jerusalem on Monday.

Since then, at least 60 Palestinian protesters and civilians were killed by Israeli snipers and tear gas along the Israel-Gaza border, while another 2,400 were wounded in the bloodiest day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2014 Gaza war.

She said people ensuring peace and security in their immediate neighborhood was key for global peace and security.

“ASEAN is one of the examples,” she said. “ASEAN contributes significantly in creating an ecosystem of peace, stability and prosperity in the region by upholding peaceful settlement of disputes, habit of dialogue and win-win, not zero-sum approach.”

In addition to speaking at the UN Security Council Open Debate, Retno also attended the UN Forum on the Question of Palestine to show her support for the Palestinian cause.

During her stay in New York, where she arrived on Monday, Retno also held separate meetings with Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius and the Finnish representative to the UN, Kai Sauer.

Retno flew to Georgetown, Guyana, on Friday night to meet with that country’s president and foreign minister and the secretary-general of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Afterwards she is to continue to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the G20 and MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia) Foreign Ministerial meeting and then to Peru.

Separately, a delegation led by Vice President Jusuf Kalla embarked in another mission to support the Palestinian cause at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Extraordinary Summit in Istanbul on Friday. The meeting was called to discuss the current situation in Gaza.

In the ministerial meeting ahead of the summit, Deputy Foreign Minister AM Fachir called on the OIC to take “firm, concrete and practical steps to help the Palestinian people to respond to the current situation”, according to the official Twitter account of the Foreign Ministry.

He also reminded the OIC Office to boycott products manufactured in Israeli occupied areas, which was a concrete follow-up to the fifth extraordinary OIC Summit on Palestine and Al-Quds Al-Sharif in Jakarta in 2016.