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Subject: “United Nations,Agencies,Adjacent Bodies”

  • Arunachal and Aksai Chin between ‘unspecified’ claim lines on UN-endorsed map

    Why in the News

    A new world map endorsed at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) shows Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as distinct regions lying between Indian and Chinese “claim lines”. The endorsement came through the “Correct the Map” resolution adopted on 4 September 2026, which India backed and voted for. The External Affairs Ministry has stated that its vote covered the underlying principle of promoting equal-area cartographic representation. The Ministry has also stated that the resolution constitutes no endorsement of any specific map, projection or depiction of national boundaries. The contest is over what the vote carried with it. A resolution India supported has put into circulation a boundary depiction India rejects, on a document multilateral institutions worldwide will use.

    What is the “Correct the Map” resolution?

    1. About: It is a UNGA resolution endorsing the Equal Earth cartographic projection, a method that renders every landmass at its true relative area rather than inflating the higher latitudes.
    2. The document it endorsed: The accompanying draft world map was authored by the UN Geospatial office on 1 July 2026 and taken up in informal UNGA consultations.
    3. Its legal weight: The map binds no state, and it will still be used by multilateral institutions worldwide as their reference outline.

    Why did African states push for a new projection?

    1. The founding demand: The African Union supported the Equal Earth projection in March 2026 on the ground that it represents Africa more accurately than the projection then in use.
    2. The framing used: The African Union called this approach “cognitive justice”, treating a distorted world image as a distortion of political standing and not only of geometry.
    3. The route to the Assembly: Togo prompted UNGA consultations on the map in April 2026, and the Assembly opened informal consultations in July 2026.
    4. The sponsorship: Togo sponsored the resolution with African Union support, so the campaign’s centre of gravity sat outside the states whose frontiers the map redraws.

    What does the map show along India’s contested frontiers?

    1. Arunachal Pradesh: The map marks the State’s southern border with Assam as the Chinese line and its northern border as the Indian line, and it eliminates the State’s border with Nagaland altogether.
    2. Aksai Chin: The eastern borders of the region are shown as the Indian line and the western borders as the Chinese line, leaving it as a zone between two competing depictions.
    3. The labelling change: These lines continue earlier UN maps, and unlike the 2011 UN map they are not specified as “claim lines” anywhere on the July 2026 sheet.
    4. Jammu and Kashmir: The map uses a dotted line for the Line of Control (LoC), with a printed note recording that the dotted line represents approximately the LoC agreed upon by India and Pakistan and that the final status of the region has not yet been agreed by the parties.
    5. Kalapani: The depiction runs in India’s favour on the Nepal frontier, reflecting India’s control over the Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura region that Nepal claims.

    Why does India’s vote sit uneasily with the map it endorsed?

    1. The stated basis of the vote: The External Affairs Ministry has framed India’s support as a vote on equal-area representation as a principle, detached from any boundary depiction.
    2. The standing red line: The Ministry’s position is that India’s sovereign territory, including Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, must be depicted in accordance with India’s official map, and that any inaccurate or misleading depiction is unacceptable.
    3. The gap the map leaves: No note on the map explains why Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin alone were placed between two claim lines, so the depiction carries no stated cartographic reasoning a state can answer.
    4. The asymmetry in treatment: The disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir is written out in a note on the map, and the northern frontier lines carry no equivalent qualification.

    Challenges to the UN world map’s boundary depiction

    1. A non-binding map still becomes the working outline: Agencies reuse a United Nations base map in reports, datasets and briefings long after the political moment that produced it. Eg. China issued a “standard map” in 2023 placing Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin within its own boundary, and India rejected the depiction formally.
      The Fix: Press for an explicit cartographic note recording the northern lines as unsettled claims, on the pattern the same map already applies to other disputed frontiers.
    2. Third party cartography hardens bilateral disputes: A published depiction gives each side a document to cite in a boundary question only the two states can settle. Eg. Nepal amended its Constitution in 2020 to adopt a map including Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura, and India rejected the amended map.
      The Fix: Route objections through the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs and the India-Nepal Boundary Working Group rather than through the publisher alone.
    3. Depiction is settled in expert bodies, not in the plenary: Boundary conventions are prepared by geospatial specialists and arrive at member states as a finished draft. Eg. Cartographic standards are developed through the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management rather than by a floor vote.
      The Fix: Place Indian surveyors and cartographers inside those expert bodies so a depiction is contested at drafting stage rather than after adoption.
    4. Domestic map rules carry no force on foreign publishers: India regulates how its boundaries are shown within its own jurisdiction and holds no equivalent leverage over a document issued abroad. Eg. Foreign platforms have repeatedly shown Jammu and Kashmir with dotted boundaries in editions sold outside India.
      The Fix: Publish the Survey of India’s official outline as a free machine readable dataset, so the authoritative version is the cheapest one for an international user to adopt.

    Conclusion

    A cartographic reform demanded on grounds of equity has produced a frontier depiction India does not accept, on a document India voted to endorse. The projection question and the boundary question travelled together, and only the first was ever put to the Assembly. What to watch is whether the External Affairs Ministry secures a labelling correction from the UN Geospatial office before the map settles into routine multilateral use. The second marker is whether India’s objection is recorded on the sheet itself rather than in a statement alongside it.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “The reform process in the United Nations remains unresolved, because of the delicate imbalance of East and West and entanglement of the USA vs. Russo-Chinese alliance.” Examine and critically evaluate the East-West policy confrontations in this regard.”

  • India votes in favour of UNGA resolution on new world map

    Why in the News

    India has voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution aimed at correcting the world map to promote a “more accurate representation” of continental landmasses. The 193-member Assembly adopted the resolution “Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa”, which was sponsored by Togo. It encourages governments and institutions around the world to replace the traditional Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection, which “shows locations more accurately”. The resolution carried 164 votes in favour, with a lone vote against from the United States. The question the vote raises is whether a projection designed in the sixteenth century for navigation should continue to set how the world’s regions are seen.

    What is a map projection, and what does the Mercator do to area?

    1. The underlying problem: A projection is the rule for transferring a curved surface onto a flat sheet, and no flat map can preserve shape, area, distance and direction at the same time. Every projection therefore chooses which property to keep and which to sacrifice.
    2. What the Mercator keeps: It preserves angles, so a line of constant compass bearing plots as a straight line. That property is what made it a navigator’s map.
    3. What it sacrifices: Scale grows with distance from the equator, so landmasses near the poles are inflated and those near the equator are compressed. Eg. Greenland reads as roughly the size of Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger.
    4. What Equal Earth does instead: It is an equal-area projection, so every region occupies its true share of the map’s surface. The cost is a controlled distortion of shape rather than of size.

    What did the Assembly actually adopt?

    1. The instrument is a recommendation: The resolution encourages governments and institutions to switch projection. A General Assembly resolution of this kind carries no binding force on any member state.
    2. The sponsor and the stated purpose: Togo sponsored the text, and its stated aim is the equitable representation of the world’s regions, and of Africa in particular.
    3. The campaign behind it: It carries forward an African Union-backed campaign to limit use of the Mercator map on the ground that visual under-representation reinforces a perception of the continent as peripheral.
    4. India’s vote: India voted in favour, placing it with the large majority rather than with the abstaining or dissenting group.

    What does the voting pattern show?

    1. The scale of support: 164 of the 193 members voted in favour, which is an overwhelming margin for a text with a contested premise.
    2. The single dissent: The United States cast the lone vote against.
    3. The abstentions: Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.
    4. What a wide margin does not settle: Adoption records agreement on a principle. It creates no obligation on any national mapping agency, publisher or platform to change what it prints.

    Challenges to replacing the Mercator projection

    1. No projection is politically neutral, and equal-area maps distort in their own way: Preserving area forces a distortion of shape, so a switch trades one visual misrepresentation for another. Eg. The Gall-Peters projection was promoted on the same equity argument in the 1970s and 1980s, and it stretched Africa vertically enough that seven North American geographic bodies passed a joint resolution in 1989 against rectangular projections of that kind.
      The Fix: Pair any recommendation with published guidance on which projection suits which purpose, so a navigation chart and a thematic world map are not held to one standard.
    2. The digital map layer is locked into Mercator by design: Web mapping tiles use a Mercator variant because it keeps north upward and shapes locally correct at every zoom level, which is what makes seamless zooming possible. Eg. Web Mercator underlies the standard tile schemes of the major online mapping services.
      The Fix: Require default map interfaces to switch to an equal-area view at continental and global zoom levels, where the distortion is largest and the navigation property is not being used.
    3. The change has to travel through textbooks and curricula, which move slowly: School atlases, examination material and classroom wall maps are procured on multi-year cycles, so a resolution adopted in one year reaches a classroom several later. Eg. Boston’s public school district switched its classroom maps to an equal-area projection in 2017, and the change stayed confined to that district.
      The Fix: Route the recommendation through national survey agencies and curriculum bodies, which specify the base maps that textbook publishers are obliged to reproduce.

    Conclusion

    The vote settles a question of principle that was never seriously contested and leaves the operative one untouched. What people actually see is set by the default projection of a handful of digital mapping services and by the atlases that education departments procure, and none of them is bound by this text. The measure of the resolution is therefore not the margin it passed by. It is whether a national mapping agency or a major platform changes its default in the year that follows.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “With reference to the United Nations General Assembly, consider the following statements : 1. The UN General Assembly can grant observer status to the non-member States. 2. Inter-governmental organisations can seek observer status in the UN General Assembly. 3. Permanent Observers in the UN General Assembly can maintain missions at the UN headquarters. Which of the statements given above are correct ? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is still the constitution of oceans’

    ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is still the constitution of oceans’

    Why in the News

    The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) remains the governing framework for the world’s oceans, in the assessment of Tommy Koh. He presided over the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, and led more than 150 nations to adopt the Convention in 1982. He is among this year’s Ramon Magsaysay award winners. He puts the number of parties at 172 and treats that as near universal. The United States has never ratified the Convention and still regards it as the authoritative law of the sea. Iran is not a party either, and the regime of transit passage binds it as customary international law. The Convention’s authority is therefore being tested in the Strait of Hormuz against a state that never accepted the treaty.

    What is UNCLOS?

    1. What it is: A comprehensive treaty setting the legal order for the world’s oceans, adopted in 1982 after nine years of negotiation and in force since 1994.
    2. What it allocates: It fixes the maritime zones a coastal state may claim and the rights it holds in each, running outward from the territorial sea to the exclusive economic zone, the continental shelf and the high seas.
    3. What it does with the deep seabed: Part XI treats the deep seabed and its minerals as the “common heritage of mankind”, to be administered for all states rather than claimed by any one of them.
    4. Why it is described as a constitution: It settles jurisdiction, resource rights and dispute settlement in one instrument, so later ocean agreements are negotiated inside its framework rather than beside it.

    Why has the United States never ratified UNCLOS?

    1. The objection was to the seabed regime, not to the law of the sea: The Reagan Administration rejected Part XI as incompatible with free enterprise and private property norms.
    2. It reversed an earlier American position: The stance taken during the Carter Administration was changed under President Reagan, and the demands that followed were rejected by the developing countries.
    3. The 1994 repair did not change the outcome: A separate agreement in 1994 revised the Part XI arrangements to meet those objections, and ratification still did not follow.
    4. Non ratification is not confined to one objector: Iran and a number of other states have also stayed outside the Convention.

    What binds a state that is not a party?

    1. The count itself does the work: With 172 parties, the Convention’s rules describe general state practice rather than the internal arrangements of a treaty club.
    2. Custom reaches the non party: Transit passage through international straits has passed into customary international law, so it binds Iran although Iran never joined the Convention.
    3. The dispute is political rather than legal: There was no trouble in the Strait of Hormuz before the war, so the priority is ending the war rather than rewriting the law that governs the strait.
    4. A fourth conference answers the wrong question: Reopening the Convention to bring the remaining states in would put a settled architecture back on the negotiating table, and near universal participation already exists without it.

    Where does the Convention not reach?

    1. Dark fleet enforcement is happening outside it: States are designating vessels as a “dark fleet” and taking punitive material action against them, including on the high seas.
    2. The forum named for that problem is the IMO: The International Maritime Organization, rather than a law of the sea conference, is where the practice should be addressed.
    3. Boundary disputes are read as application, not failure: Exclusive economic zone and seabed contests in the South China Sea and over Indian Ocean boundaries are treated as arguments inside the Convention’s architecture rather than as evidence that the architecture has stopped working.

    Conclusion

    A treaty honoured by states that never signed it is strong in one sense and weak in another. Its rules describe how states actually behave, which is precisely what turns them into custom. It carries no way of compelling a state that decides to behave differently, because the states outside it are the ones its dispute settlement machinery cannot reach. That gap is where a closed strait sits, and no further round of accessions would close it.

    Back2Basics: International Maritime Organization

    1. What it is: The United Nations specialised agency responsible for the safety and security of shipping and for preventing marine pollution by ships.
    2. When it was established: It was created by a convention adopted in 1948, began functioning in 1959, and is headquartered in London.
    3. What it produces: Its principal instruments are the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL).
    4. How it enforces: It sets standards that flag states then apply to ships registered with them, so it regulates through member state implementation rather than by direct enforcement at sea.

    [2022] With reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea, consider the following statements :

    1. A coastal state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baseline determined in accordance with the convention.

    2. Ships of all states, whether coastal or land-locked, enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea.

    3. The Exclusive Economic Zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.

    Which of the statements given above are correct ?

    (a) 1 and 2 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • UN panel presents legal case for broad slavery reparations

    Why in the News

    The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has issued a fresh interpretation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965.

    What is a general recommendation, and what weight does it carry?

    1. It is a treaty body’s authoritative reading of the text: A general recommendation is an interpretation of a convention’s provisions issued by the expert committee that monitors it, addressed to every State party rather than to one government.
    2. It creates no new obligation: The instrument does not amend the convention. It states what the committee holds the existing text already requires.
    3. It is unenforceable but not without effect: The findings carry authoritative weight and can inform judicial review, serve courts as an interpretative tool, and be relied on in litigation.

    What does the interpretation require of States parties?

    1. The measures must be comprehensive: States parties are required to implement reparatory measures for people of African descent covering all aspects of remedies.
    2. Three classes of measure are named: Reparatory justice is stated to combine a wide range of measures conceived as monetary, non monetary and structural.
    3. Indirect involvement is included: The duty attaches to States that profited from or facilitated the trade, not only to those that transported and sold people.
    4. Redress is framed as an obligation: The Committee treats reparation as flowing from the convention itself rather than as a policy choice available to a government.

    What is the historical record the finding rests on?

    1. At least 12.5 million Africans were taken and sold: The Committee places that transport and sale between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
    2. It is characterised as the largest forced displacement in history: That characterisation is the basis on which the Committee treats the harm as continuing rather than closed.
    3. The United Nations has already classed slavery a crime against humanity: The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted at the World Conference against Racism in 2001, recorded slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity.
    4. A standing forum already exists: The General Assembly established the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in 2021 as an advisory body on the rights of that population.
    5. The observance period has been extended: The International Decade for People of African Descent ran from 2015 to 2024, and a second decade was proclaimed for 2025 to 2034.

    Challenges to reparations for the transatlantic slave trade

    1. No forum can compel a State to pay: The Committee reviews reports and issues findings, and it holds no power to order a remedy against a State party. Eg. An inter-State claim under the convention reaches the International Court of Justice only where both States accept that jurisdiction, and several former slave trading States have entered reservations to the clause.
      The Fix: Route the claim through a negotiated inter-governmental commission with a fixed mandate and a reporting cycle, so the obligation is settled by agreement rather than left to a forum neither side can reach.
    2. Successor States dispute liability for pre-independence conduct: A modern government argues it is not the legal person that carried on a trade abolished two centuries ago. Eg. The United Kingdom has expressed regret for the slave trade and has declined to accept legal liability for reparations.
      The Fix: Separate acknowledgement from transfer by fixing a development finance commitment tied to identified harms, which avoids the succession question without abandoning the remedy.
    3. Quantifying the harm has no accepted method: Monetary, non monetary and structural measures rest on different bases, and no agreed formula converts historical injury into a present figure. Eg. The Caribbean Community’s Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, adopted in 2013, sets out categories of remedy without attaching a sum to any of them.
      The Fix: Commission a standing statistical exercise on health, education and land outcomes for the affected population, so remedies are sized against measurable present day gaps.
    4. Domestic litigation fails on procedure before it reaches merit: Claims are dismissed on limitation, standing and sovereign immunity rather than decided on the underlying wrong. Eg. Reparations suits filed in United States courts against corporations linked to slavery were dismissed on standing and limitation grounds.
      The Fix: Enact a statutory limitation waiver for historic gross rights violations, which is what allowed residential school and forced sterilisation claims to be heard in other jurisdictions.
    5. A non binding finding can harden a State’s position: A government that rejects the interpretation gains a reason to disengage from the reporting process the Committee depends on. Eg. Treaty body reporting is already years in arrears across the system, with overdue State reports running into the hundreds.
      The Fix: Pair the interpretation with a technical assistance track, so a State that accepts the framing has a route to comply that does not begin with a payment.

    Conclusion

    The Committee has moved reparations from a political demand to a stated treaty obligation. What it cannot supply is the machinery that would make the obligation operate. The unresolved tension is that the same text a claimant will now cite in court is one a government can decline to act on without breaching anything enforceable. The point to watch is whether a national court anywhere treats the interpretation as a live legal standard rather than as commentary.

    Back2Basics: Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

    1. Parent instrument: Created by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965, which entered into force in 1969.
    2. Composition: Eighteen independent experts elected by States parties, serving in their personal capacity rather than as government representatives.
    3. Core function: It examines periodic reports from States parties on the measures taken to give effect to the convention.
    4. Additional procedures: It operates an early warning and urgent action procedure, and it can consider individual complaints against a State that has made a declaration under Article 14.

    [2017, GS2, 10 marks] What are the main functions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)? Explain different functional commissions attached to it.”

  • UN panel flags ‘human rights violations’ in India, urges Delhi to suspend, review NRC

    UN panel flags ‘human rights violations’ in India, urges Delhi to suspend, review NRC

    Why in the News

    The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has released concluding observations, following its eleventh periodic review of India on August 11-12, criticising the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and calling for its suspension. This is a One development, one row item; The Hindu and The Indian Express both carried the Committee’s findings, and this entry is filed from the Indian Express account, which reports the call to suspend the NRC and the Committee’s specific concern about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, in more detail.

    What did the Committee find, and what did it call on India to do?

    1. The Committee criticised the NRC’s implementation in Assam: It found that the process subjected Bengali-speaking Muslims to what it described as “systematic and structural racial discrimination,” and called for the NRC to be suspended and India’s legislative framework around it to be reviewed.
    2. The Special Intensive Revision process was separately flagged: The Committee raised concern that Bengali-speaking Muslim voters were reportedly disproportionately affected by the Election Commission’s SIR process in West Bengal and Assam.
    3. The Committee’s concern extends to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Rohingya refugees: It said it was “gravely concerned” about reports of large-scale violations by law enforcement officials against ethnic and ethno-religious groups, including Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes (particularly Dalits), and non-citizens, and cited allegations of racially motivated violence, excessive use of force, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence.
    4. It called for accountability, not merely acknowledgement: The Committee asked India to conduct prompt, thorough and impartial investigations into these allegations and ensure accountability for those responsible, and to urgently address hate speech and hate crimes against Rohingya, Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum-seekers.
    5. India’s response came through its review delegation: India sent the Solicitor-General as head of delegation for the underlying periodic review held on August 11-12, ahead of these concluding observations.

    Conclusion

    CERD’s concluding observations place NRC suspension, a review of the associated legislative framework, and law enforcement accountability toward Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Rohingya refugees on record as a formal treaty-body finding against India, made under the same UN human rights review process, rather than as commentary on a single incident, with India’s substantive reply yet to be reported.

    Back2Basics

    1. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD): The treaty body of independent experts that monitors States parties’ implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which India ratified in 1968, through periodic reviews and concluding observations.
    2. National Register of Citizens (NRC), Assam: A register, first prepared in 1951 and updated under Supreme Court supervision, intended to identify genuine Indian citizens in Assam by excluding illegal migrants, particularly in the context of the Assam Accord (1985).
  • ‘Killer robots’ are closer than ever, warn UN, ICRC

    ‘Killer robots’ are closer than ever, warn UN, ICRC

    Why in the News

    The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have jointly warned that the world is dangerously close to the autonomous targeting of humans by machines, renewing an urgent appeal for international regulation of lethal autonomous weapon systems. The statement renews a 2023 call by the UN Secretary General and the ICRC president for specific bans and restrictions on the technology by this year.

    Note: Lethal autonomous weapon systems are weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention.

    What is the concern, and how has it changed since 2023?

    1. The warning has hardened, not softened: The two bodies stated their fundamental concerns remain unchanged from 2023 but that the underlying risks have intensified since then.
    2. The alarm includes the technology’s own developers: The statement highlights that scientists and engineers involved in developing these weapon systems have themselves raised concerns about the direction the technology is taking.
    3. No confirmed use yet, but the trajectory is the concern: Experts state there has been no confirmed use of fully autonomous weapons to directly target humans so far, and the warning is precautionary rather than a report of an actual deployment.

    International Regulation

    1. United Nations: The UN has repeatedly called for international rules governing autonomous weapons.
    2. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW): Discussions on LAWS have taken place under the CCW framework.
    3. UN Secretary General and ICRC: Both have advocated prohibiting weapons that operate without meaningful human control and imposing strict restrictions on other autonomous weapons.
    4. International Humanitarian Law (IHL): Existing principles such as distinction, proportionality and precaution remain central to assessing autonomous weapons.

    India’s Position

    1. India has participated in international discussions on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems under the CCW.
    2. India has generally emphasised the importance of human control, international law and responsible development of emerging military technologies.
    3. For India, the issue is particularly relevant as AI, drones, robotics and autonomous systems become increasingly important in modern warfare.

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] “The reform process in the United Nations remains unresolved, because of the delicate imbalance of East and West and entanglement of the USA vs. Russo-Chinese alliance.” Examine and critically evaluate the East-West policy confrontations in this regard.”

    [2025] Consider the following statements regarding Al Action Summit held in Grand Palais, Paris in February 2025:
    I. Co-chaired with India, the event builds on the advances made at the Bletchley Park Summit held in 2023 and the Seoul Summit held in 2024.
    II. Along with other countries, US and UK also signed the declaration on inclusive and sustainable AI.
    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    [A] I only

    [B] II only

    [C] Both I and II

    [D] Neither I nor II

  • Palestine backs India’s bid for non-permanent Security Council seat

    Why in the News

    Palestine has backed India’s bid for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat for 2028-29. The support came during India’s renewed diplomatic engagement with Palestine, including plans for a new India-funded hospital in the West Bank and medical assistance for Gaza.

    Non-Permanent Seat of the UNSC

    • Composition: UNSC has 15 members: 5 permanent members with veto power and 10 non-permanent members.
    • Election: Elected by the UN General Assembly for a 2-year term with a two-thirds majority.
    • Distribution: Seats follow equitable geographical representation; India contests from the Asia-Pacific Group.
    • Rotation: 5 non-permanent seats are elected every year. A retiring member cannot be immediately re-elected.

    Significance of Palestine’s Support for India

    • Palestine supports India’s 2028-29 candidature and has also expressed support for India having a permanent UNSC seat.
    • It views India’s economic and political weight as important for advancing Palestinian interests.
    • Palestine expects India to use its relations with Israel to facilitate the peace process.
    • The endorsement strengthens India’s image as a country capable of engaging both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

    India’s Development Assistance to Palestine

    • West Bank: India is finalising an India-funded hospital.
    • Vocational training: Support for a vocational training centre.
    • Gaza: Discussions on artificial limbs for amputees.
    • Medical equipment: Talks on supplying dialysis machines and other equipment, potentially through Jordan.

    India’s Position on Palestine

    • India has consistently supported:
      • A negotiated two-state solution.
      • An independent Palestine coexisting peacefully with Israel.
      • Development and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
    • The recent visit to Ramallah marked India’s first high-level visit to the affected region since the October 2023 conflict.

    India’s De-hyphenated Israel-Palestine Policy

    India follows a de-hyphenated approach, treating relations with Israel and Palestine independently.

    • Full diplomatic relations with Israel were established in 1992.
    • India has deepened strategic cooperation with Israel while continuing to support Palestinian statehood.
    • India has continued supporting Palestinian-related resolutions at the UN.
    • This balancing gives India diplomatic credibility and leverage with both sides.

    “[2009] The Security Council of UN consists of 5 permanent members, and the remaining 10 members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of

    (a) 1 year

    (b) 2 years

    (c) 3 years

    (d) 5 years

  • Discuss the impediments India is facing in its pursuit of a permanent seat in UN Security Council.

  • What are the aims and objectives of the McBride Commission of the UNESCO? What is India’s position on these?

  • What are the main functions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)? Explain different functional commissions attached to it.