With its credibility and effectiveness at stake, the Security Council must undergo comprehensive reform if the United Nations is to uphold its founding ideals, the General Assembly heard today.
Recalling the Council’s primary role of maintaining international peace and security, the Assembly Vice President at the eighty-first session said the 15-member organ’s effectiveness “matters to every nation, large or small”.
“When it cannot act, confidence in the wider Organization suffers.” Reform must therefore strengthen conflict prevention, responses to threats to peace and lasting political solutions. The process “is and must remain” Member State-led, he added, stressing that “States should remain firmly in the driver’s seat”. He announced the reappointment of Tareq M. A. M. Albanai of Kuwait and Lise Gregoire-van Haaren of the Netherlands as co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Negotiations, urging sustained engagement and compromise.
Calling for a more inclusive, transparent and accountable Council, he stressed: “The task now is to move to focused discussion. We should preserve progress from one session to the next, rather than repeatedly retrace the same ground.”
Calls Mount for Reform of Council ‘Frozen’ in 1945
As delegates took to the podium, their statements focused on the urgency of reform, its methodology and competing proposals.
“A Council built for the world of 1945, and frozen in that shape while the world has moved on, is itself among the clearest reasons that confidence in and the perceived legitimacy of multilateral institutions have thinned”, stated Saint Lucia’s representative, speaking for the L.69 Group of Developing Countries. She added that the multilateral system cannot be trusted when the very organ responsible for maintaining international peace and security is its least representative part.
“The case for reform is compelling”, said Germany’s representative, speaking for the Group of Four, comprising Brazil, India, Japan and his country. Following last year’s submission of a proposed model by the African Group, “all models are now on the table”, he said, adding that there can be no further delay in developing a consolidated model.
Concurring, the representative of Jamaica, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), cautioned that while the intergovernmental negotiations have enjoyed some “incremental progress”, delays prolong the underrepresentation of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. “These delays also hinder the aspirations of groups such as small island developing States for guaranteed representation on the Security Council”, he stressed.
‘Africa Needs to Be at the Table, Not on the Menu’
Namibia’s delegate, speaking for the African Group, and noting that “Africa needs to be at the table, not on the menu”, invoked the commitments of the Pact for the Future. Recalling the pledge to “redress the historical injustice against Africa as a priority and, while treating Africa as a special case, improve the representation of the underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups”, he restated the continent’s “unchanged and unambiguous” demand of two permanent seats, with all the rights and privileges, and five non-permanent ones, as articulated in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.
Agreeing, China’s representative said the focus must be on enhancing the representation and voice of developing countries as “the ultimate goal is to change the situation of the Security Council’s imbalance between the North and the South, the perpetual dominance by a single bloc and the overrepresentation of developed countries”.
Similarly, Bahrain’s delegate, speaking for the Arab Group, said the lack of adequate Arab representation “remains one of the most significant existing gaps in the Council’s structure” despite its “geopolitical and demographic weight”. Any genuine and credible reform “must address this imbalance by guaranteeing permanent Arab representation in any future reform formula”.
Permanent Seats, Veto Powers Divide Member States
Supporting an expansion of only the Council’s non-permanent membership, Italy’s representative, speaking for the Uniting for Consensus group, said adding new permanent members would undermine the principle of equal rights and sovereign equality of States and further limit opportunities for other Member States to serve on the Council. “Let us be realistic: how could the expansion of the Security Council’s permanent membership and the extension of veto possibly make the Council more effective?” he asked. “It would merely extend existing privileges to a few more States.”
Disagreeing with this position, Cuba’s speaker said that an expansion of the 15-member organ “should not be partial, biased or selective in nature, neither should it involve an increase in Security Council members that works to the detriment of developing countries”.
The Russian Federation’s representative acknowledged “there is an unjustified distortion in favour of Western States” which represent a “disproportionately small share of the world’s population”. However, she warned that expanding the membership to 25 or 30 would “double the time needed for discussion of urgent issues and crafting solutions seeking compromise”. This proposed “radical rise” in the number of seats will also reduce each member’s decision-making role. As such, Moscow proposes keeping membership in the low 20s. Her country also does “not support initiatives which trample upon the prerogatives of current permanent members of the Security Council, including the veto”, which was established by the founding fathers to ensure a balance in adopted decisions, she said.
Denmark’s representative, also speaking for Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, warned that “the misuse of the veto continues to prevent the Security Council from living up to its primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security”. The Council must protect civilians and prevent atrocities.
Council Paralysis, Double Standards Draw Criticism
Burkina Faso’s representative, citing growing “polarization” and “paralysis”, urged States to identify areas of progress and deadlock as the Council’s composition and working methods no longer reflect today’s geopolitical realities. “The machinery needs to be rethought”, she said.
Turning to country-specific concerns, the representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea accused the Council of “double standards” for failing to condemn United States military actions while treating Pyongyang’s exercise of self-defence as a threat to international peace and security.
For Ukraine’s speaker, Council reform cannot be credible without addressing its members’ actions. “A State that wages a war of aggression, violates the Charter and commits war crimes cannot be entrusted with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security”, he said, accusing Moscow of using its seat to shield its aggression.