Deputy Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir attends the G20 Foreign Minister Meeting on Feb. 20, 2025, at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. - AFP
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s senior diplomat has emphasised the need for multilateral reform on the global stage, highlighting the multilateral system’s erosion because of a growing lack of interest among countries in cooperating to maintain peace and stability.
Second Deputy Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir made the statement at the two-day G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (FMM) in Johannesburg, South Africa late last week.
“Multilateralism keeps eroding while countries that built this system become increasingly reluctant to maintain it,” Arrmanatha said in a press release distributed by the Foreign Ministry on Saturday (Feb 22). “If this trend continues, the global system is at risk of failing.”
The deputy minister warned that the world has seen an intergovernmental organisation like the League of Nations, established to maintain peace after World War I, fall apart because of weak enforcement of international law, inability to prevent aggression by major countries and a lack of commitment by countries to uphold the cooperation.
Arrmanatha said international law must also be enforced consistently without being selective. “If international law is only used when it benefits certain parties, then its credibility will be further weakened,” he said.
Arrmanatha told the G20 meeting that the group must play a more active role in encouraging the reform of the global system. “The cost of inaction is too great. We must move forward to push for the progress of the reform of multilateralism to create a better world for all,” he concluded.
The G20, a grouping of 19 countries and European Union and African Union, is deeply divided on issues from Russia's war in Ukraine to climate change, AFP reported. Serving as a curtain-raiser to the upcoming G20 summit in November, the foreign ministers meeting was held for the first time in Africa.
Top diplomats attending the event include Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and European envoys like France's Jean-Noel Barrot. But the group's richest member, the United States, was only represented by the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Pretoria after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped the meeting amid disputes with the host nation over several policy issues, including diversity, equality and inclusion.
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa opened last week the G20 foreign ministers meeting with a call for "cooperation" amid geopolitical tension and "rising intolerance". "It is critical that the principles of the UN Charter, multilateralism and international law should remain at the center of all our endeavours. It should be the glue that keeps us together," Ramaphosa said, as quoted from AFP. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
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