UNGA presidency win because of international community's trust in Maldives: Shahid

Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid said that his election as the United Nations (UN) General Assembly president was due to the international community’s "trust and confidence" in the Maldives.

The General Assembly on Monday elected Shahid to be its president ahead of the 76th General Debate in September, when Shahid will officially take office.

In a secret ballot, Shahid, who ran against Afghanistan’s Zalmai Rassoul, got 143 votes from the body.

In his address at the UNGA following the landslide victory for Maldives, Foreign Minister Shahid stressed that the win shows that the international community “accepts” Maldives as well as incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s foreign policy.

He thanked the countrys for the “trust and confidence” on him and the country, as well as the “honour”.

He emphasized that Maldives “was, and is a small nation with few diplomats and fewer resources”.

This, foreign minister Shahid stressed “is the Maldivian way”.

The minister also reminisced and joked about his earlier years as a young foreign diplomat at the UNGA, when he “had more hair”. Shahid said that he was fascinated by multilateralism even then as well, as well as that he was “convinced it was the way forward”.

And now that he will be the next UNGA president, Shahid said that his “ultimate objective is to 9strengthen multilateralism, enhance cooperation, make the UN deliver, reign in a presidency of hope”.

However, his first five main priorities are (as per order), recovering from Covid-19, rebuilding sustainably, responding to the needs of the planet, respecting the rights of all and revitalizing the United Nations.

Just after his election, Shahid wrote on Twitter: “I am deeply humbled by the trust and confidence placed in me, and on my country, the Maldives, by this election for the President of UNGA76."

Minister Shahid began his professional career in 1983, as a Foreign Service Officer and rose through the ranks rapidly. He first attended the United Nations General Assembly sessions from 1987 to 1994, and by 1993 was promoted to the post of Director, International Affairs.

He served as the Executive Secretary to the President at the President’s Office for 10 years, from 1995, and in 2005 was appointed as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Shahid was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs for the first time in 2007, and later in 2018 by the incumbent president.

He became the first democratically elected Speaker of the Peoples’s Majlis in 2009, following the adoption of the new democratic Constitution in 2008.

Shahid is the first UNGA President elected from the Maldives in the UN’s 75 year history and the 55 years since the Maldives became a member.