Juan Ramón de la Fuente Ramírez, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations (Credit: un.org)
By Gary Raynaldo DIPLOMATIC TIMES
UNITED NATIONS – NEW YORK – MEXICO officially took over as President of the UN Security Council Monday for the month of November with a focus on Migration, Climate Change, and International Peace and Security. Juan Ramón de la Fuente Ramírez, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations and president of the Security Council for November, laid out the Council’s programme of work for the month during a press briefing with reporters at UN headquarters in New York. Mexico will organise three signature events during its presidency. It will convene a high-level open debate on “Exclusion, inequality and conflicts” under the agenda item “Maintenance of international peace and security”. Secretary-General António Guterres and a civil society representative are expected to brief. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico is expected to chair the meeting. With Mexico in the global spotlight at the UN, it is expected that the Security Council will debate migration and its impact on international peace and security. The problem with the surge in migrants on the U.S. southern border is an issue of international importance that can’t be ignored. It is a powder keg waiting to explode.
Mexico calls for respect for migrants’ rights, and ‘true international solidarity’
The number of migrant children reported in Mexico has increased sharply, jumping from 380 to nearly 3,500 since the beginning of the year: a nine-fold rise, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, reported in April. In his address to the high-level debate at the UN General Assembly in September, Marcelo Ebrard, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico said migration is a subject in Mexico that deserves more attention. Ebrand said Mexico has a long tradition of solidarity with people who need assistance for humanitarian reasons. “This is why we have granted international protection to people from Afghanistan who find themselves in a situation of extreme vulnerability, particularly to women and girls”, Ebrand said. He also stressed it is important to all to recognize that migration had benefited all societies at some point in their historic development.
La Misión de México en la ONU, encabezada por el embajador Juan Ramón de la Fuente (@MXNacionesUnida) informó que el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU 🇺🇳 adoptó por unanimidad el programa de trabajo presentado por México que dará prioridad a la agenda de la mujer pic.twitter.com/OzNjquvtO5
— Ana Maria Lomeli (@AnitaLomeli) November 1, 2021
Mexico To Convene High-Level Debate on Peace and Security Through Preventative Diplomacy at UN
Mexico will also convene another high-level open debate on the theme “Peace and security through preventive diplomacy: A common agenda to all UN principal organs” under the agenda item “Maintenance of international peace and security”. Briefings are anticipated from Abdulla Shahid, President of the General Assembly; Collen Vixen Kelapile, President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); Joan E. Donoghue, President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ); and Secretary-General António Guterres. The third signature event Mexico plans to convene is an open debate on Small Arms. Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) Robin Geiss and a civil society representative are the anticipated briefers.
African issues on UN Security Council programme of work in November are:
- LIBYA, briefing and consultations on the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the semi-annual briefing by the ICC Prosecutor concerning cases in Libya;
- SOMALIA, briefing and consultations on recent developments in the country and on the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM); and
- the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel (FC-G5S), briefing and consultations on the activities of the force.
Ambassador de la Fuente has been the Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations since February 2019. He is a distinguished scholar who has served as Mexico´s Minister of Health and as Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he currently is an Emeritus Professor. De la Fuente graduated from Medical School Medicine from the National Autonomous University in 1976 and trained in Psychiatry Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, United States. When he returned to Mexico he founded the Clinical Research Unit of the Mexican Institute of Psychiatry and joined the Faculty of UNAM’s School of Medicine, where he was appointed Dean in 1991. In 1995 he was also elected President of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and a few years later he was appointed Secretary of Health by President Zedillo.
