ADDRESSING a panel discussion at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi recently, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said there is an urgent need for significant reforms within the United Nations. He highlighted the UN’s recent failure to address major global challenges and suggested that its effectiveness has been compromised by its quadrupled size since its inception. While he held the US and its Western allies as the dominant force for shaping the new world order where we are today, he was quick to add that the new players haven’t helped. “If you take UN Security Council reform, the biggest opposer is not a Western country,” he said, without naming China. “So, let’s get the totality of the problem right. We have to battle bit-bybit to create groups for change,” he added. Jaishankar’s remarks come as four out of five permanent members of the UNSC have supported India’s candidature for a permanent seat at the global body while China continues to take an ambivalent stand vis-avis India’s candidacy.
India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had vociferously called for reforms in the United Nations and other multilateral global institutions at the G20 Summit held in New Delhi during its presidency, in September last year. It reiterated its call at the recent ministerial meeting of the G20 held under Brazilian presidency also, describing the current multilateral governance architecture as “outdated”.
India has been at the forefront of efforts at the United Nations to push for an urgent long-pending reform of the Security Council, emphasising that the country rightly deserves a place at the UN high table as a permanent member. As India has argued at the recent meeting of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform, mere expansion of the Security Council is not enough; there is an urgent need to address geopolitical issues constructively and find common ground. Equity must be the cornerstone of global efforts to make the United Nation’s highest executive body more effective and meaningful. In its present form, with each of the permanent members exercising the veto power, the UN has been virtually made defunct in finding a solution to any global crisis in a divided world.
India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj, recently articulated the fundamental question that has been troubling a vast majority of the members of the United Nations. “Equity demands that every nation, irrespective of its size or power, be afforded an equal opportunity to shape global decision-making,” she said, adding that “Our question, therefore, is how much longer the will of five members continue to override the collective voice of 188 member states?” Ambassador Kamboj rightly argued that expanding only in the non-permanent category of the Security Council will not solve the problem. “It will in fact widen the difference between permanent and non-permanent members even more, thereby perpetuating inequities instead of removing.”
Under the existing system, any of the five permanent members of the Council – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – has exclusive veto right to impact decision-making in the United Nations Security Council. Its 10 other members are elected for twoyear terms to the non-permanent category and they do not have any power.
