India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has affirmed that powerful countries continue to resist global change and that we live in a world of "double standards" during his visit to the US.
There is growing sentiment in the world, and the Global South embodies it, but there is a lot of political resistance from the Global North, Jaishankar said while speaking at a ministerial session titled 'South Rising: Partnerships, Institutions and Ideas.'
"We see this in the UN Security Council most of all, are resisting the pressure to change," he said.
"Those who are economically dominant today are leveraging their production capabilities and those who have institutional influence or historical influence have actually weaponized a lot of those capabilities as well," he added.
The diplomat said that developed countries voice their concerns about all the right things, but "reality is still today, it's a world very much of double standards."
India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Ruchira Kamboj also hosted the event and the panel discussion was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal Joao Gomes Cravinho and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica Kamina Johnson Smith.
Jaishankar also spoke about India's G-20 presidency and said that it was a challenging summit because India was confronting a very sharp East-West polarization and a very deep North-South divide.
"But we were very determined as the presidency of the G-20 to make sure that this organization was able to get back to its core agenda which was of global growth and development," Jaishankar stressed.