External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will launch India’s campaign for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2028-29 term during his visit to the United States next week, where he is also scheduled to hold talks with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the UN headquarters.
Jaishankar is expected to arrive in the US on Saturday after concluding a four-nation tour of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman from July 5 to 10.
His official engagements in New York will begin on Monday with the launch of India’s campaign for the 2028-29 UN Security Council term at a special event at the UN headquarters.
Following his US visit, Jaishankar will travel to Brussels to participate in the third India-EU Trade and Technology Council meeting and hold discussions with his counterparts from the European Union and Belgium on July 14 and 15.
The schedule released by the United Nations shows that Guterres is set to meet Jaishankar at the UN headquarters on Monday afternoon.
India most recently served as a non-permanent member of the Security Council during the 2021-22 term. Elections for the 2028-29 tenure are scheduled for June next year, when India and Tajikistan will contest the lone seat allocated to the Asia-Pacific Group.
The upcoming Security Council election will take place against the backdrop of major geopolitical developments, with conflicts including the war in Ukraine, the Gaza conflict and the US-Israel war against Iran continuing to shape the international landscape.
As part of its campaign, India has adopted the message “#India4UNSC 2028-29 Peace, Planet, Progress.”
During his address to the Parliament of Indonesia earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the international order is undergoing rapid transformation and that “developing countries like ours are seeking equal participation and a greater role in global affairs.
In this evolving global landscape, India firmly believes that reforms in the United Nations Security Council can no longer be delayed.”
India has long advocated comprehensive reform of the UN Security Council, including an expansion of both its permanent and non-permanent membership categories. New Delhi has maintained that the 15-member body, established in 1945, no longer reflects present-day geopolitical realities and is ill-equipped to address the challenges of the 21st century.
The government has repeatedly asserted that India deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council and has argued that reform limited to expanding only the non-permanent category would amount to a missed opportunity. According to India, such a step would leave the decision-making structure dominated by the Council’s five permanent members fundamentally unchanged.
With negotiations on Security Council reform making little headway over the years, India has also argued that the principle of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” should not be allowed to impede progress.
“Status-quoists have tried to use this argument in their favour and thereby, entrench the existing inequities in the Security Council,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni had said last month.
