With Ambassador Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve,
Permanent Representative of Belgium to the UN in New York until July 2020

Under the United Nations Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Belgium was elected to the UNSC  for a two-year period covering the years 2019 and 2020.

What does this participation represent for a country like Belgium? What were its priorities, especially in thematic files? What has Belgium been able to achieve as a member and during her presidency of the Council last February? What were the difficulties it encountered? How do the remaining four months of its mandate look like?

How does the Council work? What is the relationship and distribution of roles between permanent members with veto power and non-permanent members? What can be the objectives of a cooperation between non-permanent members?

What about European cooperation in the Security Council, of which the European Union is not a member as such?

How is the “crisis of multilateralism” experienced when taking up a seat on the UNSC?

In light of the experience of 19 months during which Ambassador Pecsteen helds the Belgian seat within the UNSC, he will speak on all these issues, as well as on issues submitted to the Council and dealt with by him, such as, for example, the conflicts in the Middle East or Libya and his efforts to suspend the conflicts due to the pandemic.

The webinar will be moderated by Johan Verbeke, Ambassador, former Director General of the Egmont Institute and who held the same position as our lecturer a few years ago.

The webinar will be introduced by Deborah Seward, Director of the Regional Information Centre for Western Europe.

The webinar will be held in French, Dutch and English.

Please register here  by Thursday 3 September at noon.

Zoom Webinar – link will be sent at a later date.