Discurso do Representante Permanente, Embaixador Sérgio França Danese, em debate da Assembleia Geral sobre o uso do veto durante a reunião número 9609 do Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas - 1.º de maio de 2024 (texto em inglês)

I thank the President of the General Assembly for convening this meeting prior to the resumption of the 10^th Special Emergency Session.

Today’s meeting offers an opportunity to prepare ahead of the 10^th Emergency Special Session, in which we hope for concrete and decisive action by this General Assembly.

Brazil, as nearly every other member of this organization, is dismayed at the failure of the Security Council to put an end to obvious violations of international law occurring in Gaza and in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They occur in the context of decades of failure by the international community to address the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The unjustifiable veto cast in the Security Council, on April 18, was cast against the authority of this very General Assembly. It pertains to this Assembly, the main deliberative organ of the United Nations, to decide on any such membership requests as that of the State of Palestine. The role of the Council on the question of admission is to recommend and defer to this body for the decision.

We therefore commend all those Council members who understood their precise part in this process, particularly those who supported a positive recommendation even though they still withhold bilateral recognition of the Palestinian State on political grounds.

Colleagues,

The State of Palestine is a legal and political reality. Regardless of not yet being a formal member of this organization, over 140 countries, including Brazil, have explicitly recognized it and maintain diplomatic relations with it. This reality is further demonstrated by Palestine’s active and responsible membership in other international and regional organizations and UN agencies.

Continuous blockage, from within the Council, of the General Assembly’s prerogative to decide on Palestine’s membership will only embolden those who, by negating the legal reality of Palestinian statehood, would rather not afford Palestinians the rights and protections they enjoy under international law. Those who would rather expect a solution for that decades-old conflict to come about miraculously, after this tragedy in Gaza, solely by renewing a commitment to a negotiating process that has already been dragging for ages and was deliberately stalled by one side.

The ongoing massacre in Gaza; the persistent illegal occupation and repeated attempts to annex parts of the Palestinian territory; the crystallization of a legal system that discriminates against Palestinians in their own land: these are all consequences of a refusal to acknowledge Palestinian statehood, denying the Palestinian people their fundamental right to self-determination on an equal footing with other nations. Admission of Palestine as a full member of the UN would be a powerful new element for change in this process.

Mr. President,

The Security Council has not only powers, but also obligations. It shall represent the interests of the wider membership of the United Nations, on whose behalf it acts.

The General Assembly, for its part, not only gathers the entire membership, but also has a historical responsibility in the realization of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, as it correctly had in the creation of the State of Israel.

The exercise of this prerogative cannot be hindered by an unjustifiable use of the veto power in the Security Council. We therefore look forward to the resumption of the 10th Special Emergency Session.

We are hopeful that it can be used to delineate an irreversible path toward the realization of the two-State solution, including by signaling to the Security Council that the General Assembly is ready to admit the State of Palestine as a full-fledged member of the United Nations.

Thank you.