Attending the seminar, on the VASS side, there was the presence of Dr. Dang Xuan Thanh, VASS Vice President, and leaders of international research institutes and scientific researchers from affiliated units and Vietnamese and Japanese scholars.
The world today lacks an effective multilateral organization capable of mobilizing and coordinating the efforts of the international community to address common uncertainties and challenges. The United Nations needs to be enhanced to continue to maintain stability, security, prosperity and world order in this complex geopolitical context.
In recent years, the world has witnessed the fierce strategic competition of major countries and the world geopolitical situation has become more complicated than ever. Major countries continuously adjust their strategies, increase their military strength, and expand their involvement to dominate world security and politics. Major powers on the one hand call for the consolidation of the rules-based order, on the other hand, violate international laws and nullify multilateral international institutions such as the United Nations.
In the context that the United Nations, especially the Security Council, holds a major responsibility for maintaining world peace and stability, but cannot make a decision regarding Russia's attack on Ukraine due to faced opposition from a number of countries (the Japanese side collectively referred to this issue as not fully promoting the role of the Security Council), in order to improve this situation and help the United Nations have a can play its full role.
Opening remarks, Dr. Dang Xuan Thanh - Vice President of the Academy emphasized: After nearly 80 years of existence and development, the United Nations has constantly grown and proved to be an indispensable organization in world politics, making a very important contribution to peacekeeping, a peaceful environment, cooperation for the development of world prosperity. Vietnam and Japan are active member countries, actively participating in UN activities.
According to Dr. Dang Xuan Thanh, during the cold war period, the role of the United Nations was enormous. When the world was polarized, the United Nations played a prominent role such as preserving world peace and fighting economic crises, finance, maintaining a peaceful environment among nations. In recent years, the United Nations is facing great challenges, especially related to the COVID-19 crisis. Many people believe that the United Nations is facing the need to reform, even many people think that the United Nations is gradually losing in the implementation of its mission. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the problems and challenges posed to this organization.
Vietnam became a member of the United Nations in 1977, Vietnam has increasingly played an active role and is an active member. Vietnam assumes the role of a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for two terms in 2008-2009 and 2020-2021 with a very high number of votes of confidence.
The Vice President said that Vietnam and Japan are two Asian countries that share extensive views on security and peace issues, making positive contributions to development in the region. Both countries want a sweeping reform of the United Nations, especially the issue of permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.
Expressing his pleasure to attend the Workshop and to visit and work at the Academy for the first time, Mr. Nishigori Naofumi appreciated the good diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Japan in the past time and the two sides needed make further efforts and promote cooperation in many fields to raise the two countries' relations to a new height.
Mr. Nishigori Naofumi highly appreciated the role of Japan and Vietnam in bilateral and international relations with the United Nations. In addition, important diplomatic activities between the two countries in the near future (holding the G7 meeting in Hiroshima; the Japan-ASEAN summit in Tokyo in December 2023) will be political commitments. Japan's strength towards Vietnam in promoting the relationship between the two countries and expanding bilateral relations. In addition, the topic of the workshop is of practical significance for the two countries to jointly recognize and discuss and orient issues to be resolved in order to strengthen the comprehensive role of the United Nations and the Security Council, security in the current volatile regional and global context.
Speaking on the topic "Prospects for strengthening the United Nations: The role of Japan", Prof. Dr. Yasue Mochizuki from Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan said that, for many years, Japan's goal has been to do this, for the Security Council to become more legitimate, effective and representative in reflecting the realities of the world. Since then, Japan has actively participated in promoting "human security" as well as participating in UN peacekeeping operations. According to Prof. Dr. Yasue Mochizuki, there have been public opinion polls in Japan about Japan's role in the United Nations Security Council. Since then, it has been shown that the Japanese people strongly support Japan as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, especially its role in the peacekeeping force in this organization.
Forecasting the reform trend of the United Nations Security Council, in his presentation, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chu Duc Dung, former director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, assessed review efforts to reform the Security Council so far as well as forecast reform trends to promote the role of the Security Council in the coming time. According to Assoc. Chu Duc Dung, from the 1990s to the present, the Security Council has faced increasing pressure to reform in order to ensure its representation, democracy, transparency and efficiency in order to better respond to challenges, globally is increasing. Security Council reform is the key to successful reform of the United Nations. There have been many action programs of the United Nations Secretary-General such as: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General for the 1992-1996 term; Kofi Annan (with his 2005 "Greater Freedom" report) and many other organizations have proposed draft reforms. However, not a single option was put up for a vote.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Chu Duc Dung said that while the process of negotiating the reform of the Security Council has not achieved significant results, the international community has had many initiatives to promote the reform of the Security Council in a direction that does not require amendments Charter of the United Nations. These are reforming working methods and operating standards, such as: Non-binding agreements on limiting the use of veto rights, agreements on the Security Council's debating procedure, and increasing publicity, transparency, accountability of the Security Council…/.
My Anh (E-Newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam) and Thu Trang
