Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon chaired two UN Security Council sessions this week and will take part in the annual general debate next week together with Prime Minister Robert Golob. She finds Slovenia is mostly seen as a trustworthy president of the Council.

A non-permanent member of the Council for the 2024-2025 period, Slovenia is in charge of the rotating presidency of the top UN body this month.

The country's presidency coincides with the annual meeting of world leaders of the 193 UN member states, which will this year mark the beginning of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly.

Fajon chaired her first Security Council session on 18 September which revolved around the alarming situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. Slovenia decided to highlight their right to education.

"The situation in Afghanistan is extremely concerning, and this is particularly true when it comes to the situation of women and girls. Every intolerant decree further curtails their rights. They are practically allowed to go to school only until they turn 12. They have no employment opportunities, no opportunities to participate in public life," the minister told the Slovenian Press Agency in an interview in New York.

Not all Council members were thrilled about this topic, and Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya complained about Slovenia's decision to change the format of the session without asking all of them for the green light. He was referring to a testimony by an Afghan woman who appeared via videolink and whose face was not shown due to safety reasons.

"He objected to the fact that a civil society representative took part in the debate without showing her face. We informed them of this in advance, and I took a moment later to point out that it was for her personal protection.

"We wanted to protect a young girl who had the courage to speak up about the oppression of women in Afghanistan, and all the countries welcomed that," Fajon said.

On 19 September Fajon chaired a session dedicated to Israel's illegal actions in the West Bank. The International Court of Justice recently declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory as unlawful, and the UN General Assembly adopted on 18 September a resolution demanding Israel end its occupation of Palestinian territory.

During the session she chaired, the minister warned about the rise in Israeli settler violence in the West Bank and called for respect for international law and a peace conference that would promote the two-state solution.

She will now be busy holding bilateral meetings and taking part in various events, including the upcoming Summit of the Future and a Slovenian-hosted discussion on leadership for peace, which is scheduled for 25 September.

The aim of the latter will be to discuss the Security Council's possibilities to be effective in conflict resolution. "We'll talk about at least three major conflicts - Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the wars in Gaza and Sudan. We live in an extremely polarised world where more than 50 armed conflicts are taking place."

"As the country holding the presidency, we want to confront the political reality directly, the possibilities of what countries can do to make the rules of international law and the UN Charter apply again. We can see that currently they do not apply in the Security Council."

"It seems to me that Slovenia is mostly seen by all as a trustworthy presiding country. A country that follows international law and the UN Charter and strives to address all crises, all hotspots with the same consistency," she said.

Fajon believes that a potential presence of a member that lacks respect for these rules does not make the Security Council expendable. "We need to keep drawing attention to conflicts and tackle them politically, because the world is galloping in a very dangerous direction."

Fajon has since arrived in Toronto to meet the Slovenian community in Canada and take part in a women foreign ministers' meeting co-hosted by her Canadian counterpart Melanie Joly. The conference will focus on women's rights.

"We're talking about like-minded countries that place great emphasis on protecting women's rights, and so I accepted the invitation. I will use this to pay my first official visit to Canada," she said, adding that it was now on her to visit Joly, who was in Slovenia last year when she participated in the Bled Strategic Forum.