By IANS,
United Nations : India’s Permanent UN Representative Hardeep Singh Puri turned to Facebook terminology to point to the danger of the critical issue of UN General Assembly revitalisation becoming an “event” with a ritual annual update.
“Whenever Facebook users want to express themselves through a post, they get feedback from their friends who in turn express themselves through three basic options: ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ and ‘Share,’ he noted during a joint debate Wednesday on revitalisation of the work of the General Assembly (GA).
“The best posts usually get large number of ‘Likes’ and are ‘Shared’ repeatedly, but the good ones get an equally large number of ‘Comment’ because there is still scope for further improvement,” Puri said.
“Spoken in facebook terminology, at present, GA revitalization is highly ‘commented’ upon, much ‘liked’ but rarely ‘shared,’ he said.
“There is even the danger that if not acted upon quickly, the only function that would be applied to GA revitalization is that it would be consigned to the ‘event’ category with its ‘status’ updated once a year!” Puri warned.
UN reform is a process that has to evolve with the evolving international situation, he said stressing the “need to discuss substantive measures that would strengthen the role of General Assembly as the chief deliberative, legislative, policy-making and representative body of the international community.”
“The General Assembly can expect India’s constructive support and participation in these efforts,” he said.