United Nations
As the world organisation on its 80th anniversary looks to the future, India has said that the Security Council requires an immediate fundamental overhaul and criticised those manipulating procedures to stall it UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called for the urgent reform of the Council to expand its membership to bring stability in a multipolar world.
Speaking at the Council’s debate commemorating the 80th anniversary of the UN’s founding, India’s Permanent Representative P Harish called the attempts to hold back reforms through procedural roadblocks a disservice to the Global South.
An outdated Council architecture that mirrors geopolitical realities of 1945 is not equipped to handle the challenges of 2025, he said.
The existing 80-year-old framework needs an immediate and fundamental overhaul [and] postponing it indefinitely [by] playing on procedure and process does immense disservice to our citizens, especially in the Global South, he said.
Council reform must include expansion in both permanent and non-permanent categories, and must be carried out through text-based negotiations conducted in a time-bound framework, he said.
A small group of countries led by Italy and includes Pakistan have put spokes in the wheels of reform. Known as Uniting for Consensus, the group has been preventing through procedures the adoption of a negotiating text to conduct the negotiations. Guterres, who was in Hanoi, addressed the Council in a video, pointing out that the Asia-Pacific region, which represent half of humanity, is under-represented with only one seat.
Reform of the Security Council is imperative, and long overdue, for the maintenance of global order and safety, he said. This includes expanding the membership. He pointed out that more than half the peace-keeping missions and many special political missions are in Africa, yet the continent does not have a permanent seat.
