Thrust of UN reform has to be to 'democratise' Security Council: UNGA President

United Nations: UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis has said it is “incongruous" that only five countries can exercise certain powers within the UN Security Council, underlining that the thrust of reform has to be to "democratise" the powerful UN organ, making it more fit for purpose in the 21st century.

“It's not untrue that the architecture of the Security Council was designed a very long time ago, decades ago when geographically and geopolitically the world was a very different place,” Francis, President of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, told PTI in an exclusive interview here.

Francis said many countries did not exist at the time when the UN Security Council was formed more than seven decades ago, particularly developing countries in the Global South and “countries like my own Trinidad and Tobago. We would at that time have been represented by the British.

“But the world has changed. Democratisation has spread across the globe. There are many more sovereigns at the table and the United Nations itself has realised that there is a need to rethink and re-engineer the Security Council,” Francis, a veteran diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago who was elected President of the General Assembly in June, said.

While the UNSC reform process is ongoing, Francis said “it is incongruous that only five countries can exercise certain powers within the Council”, referring to the five permanent members - China, France, Russia, the UK and the US - who have veto powers.

While 10 countries are elected for two-year terms to become members of the 15-nation Council on a rotating basis, only the permanent five have veto power.

“This is bothersome for many people, for many delegations. The thrust of the reform therefore has to be to democratise the Security Council to make it more fit for purpose in the 21st century, given that we are in a different geopolitical structure, one that most probably involves a multipolar world and where important decisions need to be taken in a more timely fashion, particularly on things like issues of human rights and humanitarian concerns.” India, the world’s most populous country, has been at the forefront of years-long efforts to reform the Security Council, saying it rightly deserves a seat as a permanent member at the UN high table, which in its current form does not represent geo-political realities of the 21st century.

Earlier this month, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj said that an expansion of the Council in both permanent and non-permanent categories of membership is absolutely essential.

“This is the only way to bring the Council’s composition and decision-making dynamics in line with contemporary geo-political realities,” Kamboj had said.

“What we...need is a Security Council that better reflects the geographical and developmental diversity of the United Nations today. A Security Council where voices of developing countries and unrepresented regions, including Africa, Latin America and the vast majority of Asia and Pacific, find their due place at this horse-shoe table,” she had said.

India has asserted that the international community can no longer hide behind the smokescreen of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) in the General Assembly and continue to pay lip service by continuing to deliver statements in a process which has no time frame, no text and no defined goal to achieve.

“If countries are truly interested in making the Council more accountable and more credible, we call on them to come out openly and support a clear pathway to achieve this reform in a time-bound manner, through the only established process in the UN, which is by engaging in negotiations based on text and not through speaking at each other, or past each other, as we have done for the last three decades,” Kamboj has said.

Francis noted that there is a degree of “hope" currently in the sense that while the UN Charter assigns primary responsibility for peace and security to the Security Council, the General Assembly also exercises certain residual powers over peace and security. He referred to the General Assembly resolution adopted two years ago requiring that any permanent member of the Council that uses the veto explain to the Assembly why it was necessary to use the veto.

“This is an important innovation that had not existed before and it is designed to enhance the level of transparency and accountability of the Security Council. But the work of reform of the Council is continuing,” he said.

He noted that there has been “some good progress” because now, even though formal negotiations have not yet been initiated, “what is discussed has been committed to paper. So delegations have a context in which to speak, and the views and positions of delegations have been recorded on paper, which is an innovation and progress going forward.

“Bear in mind, however, that reform is not going to be an event. It's a process and that process continues unabated even now,” he said.

To a question on India sitting as a permanent member in a reformed Council, Francis said "That determination will not be for the President of the General Assembly. That will be for the members at the appropriate time when those discussions come to a crescendo. I would say that whoever gets elected, the expectation would be that they would always act in the best interest of the system and of international peace and security. That’s the reason we have a (Security) Council, to defend and promote peace and security.”