UNSC President Estonia calls Security Council's handling of COVID-19 "a shame"

Estonia, the president of the United Nations Security Council for May, said it was a "shame" that the powerful UN body did not fulfill its responsibility in tackling the COVID-19 outbreak and slammed "stumbling blocks" in passing a resolution on the pandemic.

"I think it is a shame that we have not been able to take the leadership. There are certain reasons for that. But Estonia has been one of the most active in pushing very strongly for more than a month already to be there, and for the Security Council to stand where it should stand," said Ambassador Sven Jrgenson, permanent representative of the Republic of Estonia to the United Nations and president of the Security Council for May on Friday.

During a virtual press briefing, Jrgenson responded to questions on the lack of action by the council to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its failure to adopt a single resolution on the global crisis.

The ambassador said he personally hoped that a Security Council resolution on COVID-19 would have been voted two or three weeks ago.

He said a vote on the resolution might happen now, it might happen next week.

There are stumbling blocks. The situation is blocked at the moment. But the talks are very intensely continuing and they are continuing at a high level and I hope that we can really come out of the gridlock, Jrgenson said.

Two separate resolutions -- one by the five permanent members of the council drafted by France and one by the elected 10 non-permanent members drafted by Tunisia -- have now been combined and there is one resolution on the table, Jrgenson said, adding that there is still no consensus on the draft due to differences between two permanent members -- referring to the US and China.

"There are some political differences between some security council member states. The work is continuing. I hope that these differences will be resolved as swiftly as possible," he said.

Stating that the council is responsible to deal with the crisis, Jrgenson said the other members were looking forward to moving ahead with the resolution