United Nations (BLAZETRENDS).- Slovenia will occupy a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council during the 2024-2025 biennium after clearly beating Belarus on Tuesday in elections marked by the war in Ukraine.
The Slovenian candidacy received 153 votes, far exceeding the two-thirds majority required in the General Assembly, while the Belarusian one received only 38, with the details unknown because the votes are secret.
Thus, Slovenia -a member of the European Union and NATO- will occupy the place that Albania will leave vacant at the end of this year in the highest decision-making body of the United Nations, while Belarus, one of the closest partners, will remain outside. of Russia and that facilitated its invasion of Ukraine.
“UN member states decided without hesitation that gross rights abuses at home and the cover-up of Russian atrocities in Ukraine disqualify Belarus from serving on the Security Council,” said the United Nations director at Human Rights Watch ( HRW), Louis Charbonneau.
Discontent in Belarus and Russia
The Belarusian government had been preparing its candidacy for the Council for more than a decade, while Slovenia did not announce it until the end of 2021.
From Minsk and Moscow, this movement was denounced as a political maneuver promoted by the United States and the European Union to neutralize the presence of Belarus in the Security Council, something that Slovenia has denied at all times.
With Belarus, Russia would have found a faithful partner in the highest decision-making body of the UN, where it often counts on the complicity of China, but where it has suffered a clear hostile majority after the invasion of Ukraine that it has only been able to counter thanks to its veto power.
Faced with this blockade, the big votes on the conflict have been transferred to the General Assembly, whose decisions are not binding, but where Russia has also been very isolated.
Four other elected to the Security Council
The elections for the vacant seat among the Eastern European countries were the only ones disputed of those that were held this Tuesday, since in the other four cases the candidates arrived without opposition in their regional groups.
All of them easily obtained the two-thirds majority required to be elected: Guyana (191 votes in favor), Sierra Leone (188), Algeria (184) and South Korea (180).
The five newly elected will replace, as of January 1, the countries that end their term this year and which are Albania, Gabon, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Ghana, while Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland have one year further ahead.
Along with ten non-permanent members, the Security Council sits on the five powers with a fixed position since the founding of the UN (United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom), which also have veto power.