Daily Times

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) ‘s 77th session commenced in New York, US, on September 20 and continued for a week till September 26, 2022. More than 140 Heads of State, Governments and representatives were there to participate in the UNGA deliberations and several Heads of State and Governments addressed the forum.

Pakistan was represented by Prime Minister Muhmmad Shehbaz Sharif, this being his first visit ever since he assumed power in April 2022. The prime minister was accompanied by Defence Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, and Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb among others.

The prime minister addressed as scheduled on September 23, and put forth Pakistan’s case quite convincingly and strongly while highlighting the plight of a large number of unprecedented flash floods and heaviest rains affected people. He plainly told that the massive devastation and destruction in most parts of the country due to floods and rains was the most adverse impact of climate change as one-third of the country was under flood water. He emphatically called for the continued excessive flow of relief goods for the flood victims from friendly countries and international humanitarian organizations. Planes- of relief goods from more and more countries were landing every other day at Islamabad and Karachi Airports but Pakistan needed much more help and assistance from the international community, the prime minister said, adding quite rightly that the flood-affected people were now exposed to epidemics, arising from water-borne diseases and they also needed required medicines for recovering these killing diseases.

The prime minister’s maiden visit can easily be termed as quite successful, productive and result-oriented.

The UNGA was told that more than three crore people, including women and children, have perished in the heaviest-ever rains, which had washed away a large number of villages; demolished thousands of houses and massively uprooted trees and infrastructure facilities.

Pakistan was paying a heavy price for the doings of the developed countries in the context of emission of gas causing heat waves, the prime minister said; warning the world at large that if nothing was done in concrete terms, the heat wave menace would not remain confined to his country and move to other countries, sooner or later.

Dilating his country’s relations with other countries, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif rightly pointed out that Pakistan was a peace-loving country and believed in having cordial good relations with all countries particularly, its neighbours, including India.

Offering the olive branch to India, the prime minister went on to say there can be no durable peace and stability in the region unless the lingering Kashmir dispute is resolved peacefully in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions by granting the birth right of self-determination to the oppressed, suppressed and struggling people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir as huge occupying Indian security forces are continuing their brutalities and atrocities and killing innocent unarmed Kashmiri youth every day. The prime minister further pointedly stated that India should reverse its unilateral action of August 5, 2019, ending the special status of the occupied territory and continuously persisting with measures to change the demography of occupied Jammu and Kashmir in an attempt to turn the Muslim majority into a minority by issuing millions of fake domicile certificates .to Hindus and settling them there.in flagrant violations of all international laws.

While discussing the emerging menace of Islamophobia .in India and other countries around the world, the prime minister pointedly and quite emphatically stated that the officially sponsored campaign of oppression against India’s 200 million Muslims was the worst manifestation of state terrorism being undertaken by the Indian government in furtherance of Islamophobia. The world body and its member states should take concrete measures to combat Islamophobia and promote interfaith harmony as the UNGA had only early this year adopted a resolution which was moved by Pakistan with support of other Islamic countries declaring March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the UNGA forum was rightly reminded.

As regards Afghanistan, the prime minister said that peace and stability in Pakistan were linked with durable and lasting peace and securing in neighbouring Afghanistan, all should join hands with Pakistan to avoid another civil war, rising terrorism, drug trafficking or the flow of new Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries. While calling for the immediate release of frozen funds of Afghanistan, he went on to call for greater humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan helping them to avert looming threats of hunger and health crisis. The UNGA was further told that isolating the Afghan interim government could only add to the suffering of Afghan people who are already destitute and that Pakistan was engaged in encouraging due respect for the rights of Afghan girls and women to education and work.

It is worth mentioning here pointedly that the prime minister was there in New York for five days on his maiden visit for addressing UNGA and availed the opportunity to interact face to face with a number of Heads of States and Governments who were gathered for the UNGA session and apprised them about the havoc which heavy floods and rains had reeked on a large number of people in Pakistan, urging and exhorting them for more and more help and assistance for relief, rehabilitation of a large number of people rendered homeless by unprecedented rains and floods caused by a heat wave, overcoming huge losses to the standing crops and reconstruction of massively destroyed and uprooted infrastructure in flood and rains hit areas as early as possible.

It was good to note that the heads of state as well as chiefs of international financial and humanitarian institutions and organizations with whom the prime minister interacted on the sidelines of the UNGA expressed their sympathies and solidarity with flood-hit people. They assured of their assistance in relief, rehabilitation of the suffering people and infrastructure facilities reconstruction and economic stability to the maximum extent possible in a quite positive and appreciable manner.

The prime minister’s maiden visit can easily be termed as quite successful, productive and result-oriented. The prime minister who was visiting flood-hit areas across the country could have avoided going to New York and addressing the UNGA session virtually, but then he would not have got the opportunity to interact with a large number of world leaders at the UNGA as he did during his stay there, to say the least. Keep these good, positive and profitable activities of yours going on Mr Prime Minister in the right direction for the welfare and well-being of the people at large without any political and other considerations and working for a stable national economy, please.

The writer is a Lahore-based freelance journalist, columnist and retired Deputy Controller (News), Radio Pakistan, Islamabad and can be reached at zahidriffat @gmail.com