Irish foreign minister Micheal Martin on Saturday questioned the misuse of veto power at the UN Security Council.
He argued that the five-state veto power is an outdated provision which cannot be justified or deemed relevant today.
“The veto should go, in our view, it’s an anachronism,” Martin said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
He was criticising the unhinged use of veto power by the United States to block a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip multiple times.
“It has no place in the 21st century. It really hasn’t,” Martin said, stressing that “we really have to keep the pressure on that.”
According to him, these issues render the Security Council weak and useless.
“We are in no doubt that the Security Council is dysfunctional,” Martin added.
“The Security Council hasn’t managed (to issue) a statement even on Ukraine. That is an extraordinary failure, and the resolutions on Gaza have been weak,” the Irish minister pointed out.
He contended that the excess use of veto in the case of Palestine has led to a state of more inaction than action.
“There’s been more veto than action at the Security Council on Gaza for example,” he said.
The United Nations resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was supported by almost all Security Council members and scores of other nations.
But on December 8, the United States vetoed the resolution despite a large portion of the international community being against Israel’s criminal war on Gaza.
The US had also vetoed a Brazilian UNSC resolution calling for a ceasefire and supply of humanitarian aid to the genocide-torn Gaza Strip.
Martin has earlier stressed the need to address the catastrophic impact Israel’s military action is having on children and the most vulnerable civilians in Gaza.
“Gaza’s civilian population cannot be allowed to suffer further,” he said at that time.
The current series of onslaughts led by the Israeli forces have also forcibly displaced nearly two million people from all over Gaza.
The vast majority of them were sent to the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,858 Palestinians have been killed, 7,000 missing and 68,677 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
