Conversations in Diplomacy: Antonio Patriota

In this "Conversation in Diplomacy," with Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, Ambassador Antonio Patriota, the Future of Diplomacy Project Director R. Nicholas Burns examines Brazil's role in the United Nations and current reforms regarding the Security Council and future sustainable development goals. Ambassador Patriota expresses concern for the Security Council’s failure to fairly represent the significant changes in the world and the UN, arguing that "the Security Council can not continue to operate as it is today...the time has come for enlargement.” Patriota senses that there will be wide reform in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of the Security Council in the near future. Patriota also recognizes Brazil's outstanding contributions to the UN in the form of peacekeeping and budgetary support. Discussing the extraordinary challenge of contructing sustainable development goals for the post-2015 world, Patriota acknowledges that there has been a recent paradigm shift “to ensure economic social development in the future does not compromise environment." Patriota argues that the UN is "rising to this challenge," by setting a broad universal agenda of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from energy and sustainable development to poverty and education. “With all its shortcomings and inadequacies, the UN is an extraordinary creation; we would be worse without it, which doesn’t mean we can't change it for the better."

Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota is the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations. He was Ambassador of Brazil to the United States from 2007 to 2009. Prior to his appointment as Brazilian Ambassador to the United States, he served as Under Secretary General for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Relations.