India reiterates case for Security Council reform at UN

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United Nations – Fair and just representation of all the countries at the UN Security Council is an unassailable prerequisite bringing legitimacy and effectiveness to not the UN Security Council alone, but also to the UN institution, said India’s representative P. Harish, to the annual plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN Headquarters in New York on November 11, 2024.

Harish was speaking at a discussion on equitable representation and increased permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

Inclusion of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia in the permanent members of the Security Council was necessary for an equitable and inclusive Security Council, Harish said. He reminded that was also called for earlier this year in the unanimously adopted Pact for the Future at the Summit of the Future.

Pointing out that India has always believed in fair and just representation, Harsh stated, “India has consistently championed a cooperative, inclusive, and consultative approach to international relations.”

Giving example of the inclusion of the African Union in the G20 membership under India’s presidency, Harish said it was proof of political will making change possible.

He pointed out that while the UN Security Council had not introduced any changes in 80 years, newer multilateral frameworks were more accepting of changes and were working within a swift timeframe.

“However, in spite of several decades of collective reiteration of this sentiment, it is disheartening that we have had no results to show in this regard since 1965, when the Council was last expanded in the non-permanent category alone,” Harish said.

Stressing the importance of a fixed and reasonable time frame and of reaching actual agreements in negotiations, India called for much needed and long awaited representation and inclusiveness reforms as mandatory before any real progress can be achieved in the process of the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN), including Text Based Negotiations (TBN).

The UN Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) has been redundant, remaining rigid even after sixteen years of its inception, holding superficial exchanges without any real negotiations, time frames or defined goals, Harish pointed out.

Harish criticized the impractical process of the IGN where a select few countries have been taking a rigid stance about agreeing in totality before beginning any text-based negotiations (TBN). “Surely, we cannot have a more extreme case of putting the ‘cart before the horse’,” he added.

India also expressed fear that the Security Council, which had not made any changes in decades, would continue without any real reforms, at the same time, professing certain commonalities in drafts to be real agreements.

“Convergences are not consensus!” India stated.

Reiterating this fear, Harish said, “There is every danger that the search for such a lowest common denominator might be used as a smokescreen to attempt a mere tinkering of the existing framework of the UN Security Council and terming it as a major reform.”

India cautioned the General Assembly that this superficial and easy resorting to so-called reforms would undermine, ignore and prolong more important elements, the major one being the inclusion of Asia, Arica, Latin America and the Caribbean in the Security Council.

In this regard, India commended and offered support to the efforts of the UNGA President Philémon Yang and IGN Co-Chairs Kuwait and Austria towards a more equitable representation and increase of membership in the Security Council.

Harish reminded that reforming the UN Security Council was an urgent and critical task at this year’s Summit of the Future. He expressed hope that the UNGA would come up with a concrete outcome regarding this. Updating the Security Council was imperative, he said. “That should indeed be our resolution for UN’s 80th anniversary,” he said.