The Foreign Secretary will be in New York in the coming days. Nikos Dendias, with the aim of launching Greece’s official campaign to achieve the goal of becoming a non-permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council for a two-year period from January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2026. The vote for the nomination of SA non-permanent members will take place in the middle of the 78th session UN General Assembly, in 2024. In recent years, Mr. Dendias has undertaken a marathon around the world to, on the one hand, establish closer relations with countries with which Greece had little or no contact, and on the one hand, to ensure that they vote for South Africa. UN.

Vote

According to competent sources, votes have so far been received from 119 UN Member States (out of 192), while there are still some that are considered highly probable, but they are also not announced because it is considered that there is still some degree of uncertainty or because the voting countries themselves requested that their intentions not be announced before the vote. Despite the fact that it is assumed that Greece will manage to become a non-permanent member of the SA. in 2025-2026, preparations are underway to avoid possible mishaps on the way to the 2024 vote. Greece is one of the countries with the smallest participation in the Security Council since the founding of the UN. He was a non-permanent member in 1952–1953 and again in 2005–2006.

Candidacy

Greece recently applied to another UN intergovernmental body, the 47-member Human Rights Council. Greece is a candidate for membership in this body for the period 2028-2030, which was symbolically announced on February 24 on the occasion of the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While in New York, Mr. Dendias will also officially start campaigning for the Human Rights Council. Recall that Athens has taken a number of initiatives in the direction of highlighting human rights issues, with the latest appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague with a request to investigate the commission of war crimes in Mariupol by Russian troops. As part of his move to North America, Mr. Dendias is expected to visit Canada for bilateral contacts with his counterpart.