Sobers: T&T confident of securing UN Security Council seat

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that Trinidad and To­ba­go will se­cure the votes need­ed to win a non-per­ma­nent seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC), but stopped short of de­clar­ing the out­come a cer­tain­ty ahead of this week’s bal­lot.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, Sobers said he be­lieved Trinidad and To­ba­go had done enough diplo­mat­ic ground­work to se­cure the re­quired sup­port when UN mem­ber states vote on Wednes­day.

“We are very con­fi­dent, by the grace of God and with the work that we’ve been do­ing over the last cou­ple of months,” Sobers said.

“We are con­fi­dent that that work with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will get us across the line and that we’ll be able to serve with dig­ni­ty as a non-per­ma­nent mem­ber of the UN­SC.”

When asked di­rect­ly whether Trinidad and To­ba­go would ob­tain the nec­es­sary votes, Sobers replied: “I be­lieve we’ve worked hard enough to se­cure the req­ui­site amount of votes, yes.”

How­ev­er, while re­peat­ed­ly ex­press­ing op­ti­mism, the min­is­ter avoid­ed char­ac­ter­is­ing the elec­tion as a fore­gone con­clu­sion.

Asked if the coun­try’s vic­to­ry was ef­fec­tive­ly a “done deal”, Sobers re­spond­ed, “I would say that we will try our best and we will be suc­cess­ful by the grace of God.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go is run­ning un­op­posed for the sin­gle Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Group (GRU­LAC) seat on the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for the 2027-2028 term.

De­spite fac­ing no chal­lenger, the coun­try must still se­cure a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty of votes cast in the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly. With 193 mem­ber states, that trans­lates to at least 129 votes.

Sobers said he had no con­cerns about los­ing sup­port from ei­ther Latin Amer­i­ca or the Caribbean.

“We have a very good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Latin Amer­i­ca and a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Cari­com. So we are not con­cerned about that at all,” he said.

His com­ments come de­spite oc­ca­sion­al ten­sions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion­al bloc un­der the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pub­licly crit­i­cised Cari­com on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, in­clud­ing over re­gion­al pol­i­cy po­si­tions and the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s han­dling of key diplo­mat­ic mat­ters.

Sobers con­firmed he will per­son­al­ly at­tend the vote in New York, de­scrib­ing the cam­paign as a col­lec­tive ef­fort led by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives abroad.

A non-per­ma­nent seat is one of ten ro­tat­ing po­si­tions on the 15-mem­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Coun­tries elect­ed to these seats serve two-year terms and par­tic­i­pate in de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty, but do not pos­sess ve­to pow­ers, which are re­served for the Coun­cil’s five per­ma­nent mem­bers, Chi­na, France, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom and the US.

The Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is re­gard­ed as the most pow­er­ful or­gan of the Unit­ed Na­tions, with au­thor­i­ty to adopt legal­ly bind­ing res­o­lu­tions, im­pose sanc­tions and au­tho­rise in­ter­na­tion­al peace­keep­ing and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.