Kyrgyzstan’s election to a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council came after a diligent campaign to gain support for its candidacy. It means a Central Asian state will have a seat on the UN’s most powerful body for the second time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Attention now turns to what Kyrgyzstan wants to do — and what it will be able to do — on the Security Council.

“This is a new test for us,” Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said during a speech in late June. “We view membership on the UN Security Council as an enormous responsibility.”

Kazakhstan is the only other Central Asian state to have served on the Security Council, holding a seat in 2017-18.

Kyrgyzstan will beef up its UN mission in New York City from nine diplomats to 28, Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubayev told reporters July 13.

Smaller missions to the UN “prioritise the issues that matter most” to their countries, said Mirgul Moldoisayeva, who served as Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2016-21. Security Council membership greatly broadens the scope of activities.   

“The moment you join the Security Council, that changes completely. Suddenly, almost every major international crisis becomes part of your daily responsibilities,” added Moldoisayeva, who now works for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She provided written comments to Eurasianet in her personal capacity.

Kyrgyzstan will still be able to choose which issues to promote on the council, and there will likely be a “degree of continuity” with its priorities in the General Assembly, like preventative diplomacy and climate change, she said.

Climate change and the related issues of water and food security are top of the mind in Kyrgyzstan. Temperatures are rising in Central Asia faster than the global average and rapidly melting glaciers threaten drinking water and agricultural productivity.

“It’s impossible to detach climate change [from] security,” said Nargiza Murataliyeva, a professor of international relations at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. 

Looking to expand global trade opportunities for Central Asia, Kyrgyz officials are also interested in easing the Taliban government in Afghanistan’s pariah status. Doing so could help Afghanistan attract international development assistance for infrastructure development designed to facilitate the transit of goods from Central Asia to ports in Pakistan.

Central Asian states have moved from “building big walls” around Afghanistan to now seeking to integrate the country’s economy into regional networks and promote cooperation, Murataliyeva told Eurasianet. Kyrgyzstan is likely to push for a similar approach on the Security Council, she said.

The country will also likely make reform of UN institutions and operations another of its priorities because the organisation has largely been sidelined from the major international conflicts of the last decade.

“They [Central Asian diplomats] see in the United Nations the guarantee against a unipolar or hegemonic order run by the great powers,” said Filippo Costa Buranelli, a professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. 

Kulubayev, the foreign minister, emphasised UN reform, and in particular the expansion of the UN Security Council.

Yet, on some of the Security Council’s thorniest issues, Kyrgyzstan will have to play it safe.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyrgyzstan has abstained on every resolution directly related to the conflict, as well as in votes on resolutions critical of current and former Russian allies like Iran, Syria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

That’s unlikely to change during Bishkek’s Security Council term.

“I would expect a round of abstentions,” said Costa Buranelli, who has researched Central Asian states’ engagement with the UN and regularly speaks to diplomats from the region.

“For Russia, it’s important that Kyrgyzstan doesn’t vote in favour of some pro-Ukraine resolutions, but they recognise that abstentions may be in everyone’s interest,” he told Eurasianet. The five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia — find themselves on opposing sides in the conflict.

On issues in the Middle East, Kyrgyzstan has backed General Assembly resolutions supportive of Palestinian statehood, and Japarov in a 2025 speech demanded an “end to the genocide against Palestinians.”

Whatever the conflict, Kyrgyzstan will ensure Central Asia’s experience, especially with conflict prevention and management of complex borders, is reflected in Security Council discussions, Moldoisayeva said.

“The real value of this opportunity lies not simply in drawing more attention to Central Asia, but in helping the region increasingly be seen as a source of practical solutions, constructive diplomacy and successful regional cooperation,” she said.

During its stint on the body, Kazakhstan’s ambassador regularly invited fellow Central Asian ambassadors to discuss developments on the Security Council, which helped keep them informed and promoted regional dialogue, Moldoisayeva recalled.

Kyrgyzstan last ran for a seat on the Security Council in 2011, but lost resoundingly to Pakistan on the first ballot.

“Experiencing a loss at such an international scale, it can derail you,” Kyrgyzstan’s newly minted ambassador to the United States, Edil Baisalov, said in a talk at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, July 2.

The country made a “considerable number” of reciprocal agreements with other states to support their “election to this board or to this court or to this position” for support of Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council bid, Baisalov added.

Though Security Council campaigns are “measured not in months but in years,” Moldoisayeva said, “nothing is certain until the result appears on the screen.”

And, after four rounds of voting on June 3, Kyrgyzstan got the result it wanted. It gained the support of 142 nations to the Philippines’ 49, clearing the two-thirds majority necessary for election.

Manila’s bid may have been hurt by its “perceived excessive proximity to the US,” Costa Buranelli said. Despite close ties with Russia and China, Japarov’s high-profile visit to the White House at the C5+1 summit in 2025 and visits to European capitals in 2024 may have been enough to satisfy “all the important constituencies,” he said.

Additionally, the Philippines has served on the Security Council four times (the last time was in 2004-2005) and Central Asia has attracted more attention in recent years thanks to its wealth of critical minerals and logistics potential.

Kyrgyzstan’s term on the Security Council may do even more to raise the country’s profile.

“Kyrgyzstan has received a chance to show its constructive role [on] the global stage because Kyrgyzstan’s aim is to build, not to disrupt,” said Murataliyeva.

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.