Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic-Radman on Monday attended a meeting on sustainability, cooperation and peace, held under the auspices of the World Economic Forum in New York and focusing on current topics in international relations like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Croatian Foreign Ministry said.

In his address at the meeting, Grlic-Radman underlined the need for unity and solidarity in the current time of great uncertainty, caused by the war in Ukraine and the consequent lack of energy and food security and inflation. These developments have come on top of the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic, significantly increasing the risk of social unrest and political destabilisation, the minister said at the meeting.

The meeting underlined the importance of multilateralism and preservation of the international legal order.

Grlic-Radman said that as a member of the EU and NATO, Croatia had full confidence in multilateralism and believed it was the only instrument with the potential to achieve world peace, stability and balance.

He also noted that maximum effort should be made to preserve the United Nations, its Charter and its bodies.

The central part of international order is international law, including the UN Charter, as well as respect for member-states’ sovereignity and territorial integrity, he said, calling for finding peaceful solutions to conflicts in line with international law.

Speaking of the war in Ukraine, he said that it had brought into question the recovery of the global economy, threatening to spill over into regions that are sensitive in terms of security, such as Southeast Europe.

To prevent the conflict in Ukraine from spilling over, greater attention and stronger involvement by the international community in the region is necessary, the minister said, pointing particularly to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, he said, “elections are approaching without the necessary election reform having been implemented to secure a fair electoral process and stabilise the situation in the country.”

Grlic-Radman also met with the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Achim Steiner, with whom he discussed the destabilising effects of the Russian aggression on Ukraine as well as the situation in Southeast Europe.

The minister also attended the opening of a summit on transforming education, the ministry said.