Zarif Urges Multilateralism, Inclusive Collaboration to Tackle Global Challenges

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for enhanced multilateralism and inclusive collaboration among all nations to tackle the current challenges facing the world.

“To meet the special challenges of our time, we need to solidify our cooperation within the framework of CICA [Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia]. We need to secure a pivotal role for the organization, to advance multilateralism, and to ensure inclusive collaboration. It is imperative for us to pool our resources to jointly tackle the enormous challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Zarif said on Thursday addressing a virtual event of CICA.

“We all need to embrace multilateralism and reject unilateralism in addressing a global challenge of this magnitude; one that has defied all geographical, political and socio-economic divisions,” Zarif added.

"As CICA members, we should strive to strengthen cooperation within the framework of our organization—in coordination with the UN and WHO—to ensure full, free and fair access to health services, medicine, and medical equipment for our peoples. We must also act to ensure that no one can arbitrarily challenge professional international organizations. We must collectively emphasize the need for industrialized economies to assist developing countries in the transfer of medical technology and equipment. And we must urge international economic institutions—as well as wealthy countries—to provide other nations and relevant international and regional organizations with necessary financial assistance in their campaigns against the pandemic."

As inheritors of great Asian civilizations, Zarif urged encouraging a people-first approach, putting saving human lives and human dignity above all else, and rejecting any politicization of the pandemic.

“We need to jointly confront the destructive impact of unilateral coercive measures on efforts to combat the pandemic. They are nothing but economic and medical terrorism, and we must refuse to comply with these unlawful measures in our collective endeavor to tackle this common affliction of humanity,” he went on to say.

We need humility and multilateral cooperation to grapple with a microscopic enemy that has brought major powers to their knee—without deference to their military might, economic wealth and propaganda machines, Zarif concluded.