UNITED NATIONS, September 22. /TASS/. United Nations General Assembly members have passed the key document of the Summit of the Future, the Pact for the Future, despite the objections from a number of countries, including Russia, a TASS correspondent reported.
Russia took the floor at the beginning of the session to say that a number of delegations did not support the text that had been submitted with violations of the procedure. "Technically, we have nothing to adopt today and this is not the fault of the current General Assembly president and his team. They inherited this problem from their predecessors and honestly tried to do their best but they lacked time," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said.
He suggested that President of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly Philemon Yang postpone the voting until the document’s provisions were agreed. "If you decide to proceed and push through the non-consensus text, we would like to make an amendment to the Pact for the Future and its supplements on behalf of several states, namely Belarus, Nicaragua, and Russia," he said, adding that the amendment is based on the principle of non-interference into domestic affairs of other states.
The General Assembly put the issue of declining the amendment for voting. Along with Russia, Belarus and Nicaragua, delegations from North Korea, Syria, Sudan, and Iran voted against. Fifteen more counties abstained from voting, and this proposal was supported by 143 countries.
"Russia is distancing itself from the consensus on the Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact. He said that this especially concerned provisions on disarmament, issues of the participation of non-governmental organizations in the activities of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights," Vershinin said.
After the voting on the amendment, the General Assembly president said that the document was adopted by a consensus.
The Summit of the Future is running at the UN headquarters in New York on September 22 and 23 ahead of the political debate of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly. The summit’s goal is to discuss global challenges and elaborate collective solutions. However, UN Security Council members are not participating in it at the level of heads of state and government.