UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday unanimously decided that the long-running intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) on restructuring the UN Security Council (UNSC) will continue during its upcoming 79th session, with Pakistan calling the process the most appropriate platform to pursue 15-member body’s reform.

“We welcome the adoption of the oral decision today to ‘roll over’ the negotiations on Security Council reform within the IGN process,” Ambassador Usman Jadoon, deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told the 193-member assembly after the vote.

With the aim of instilling new life into the discussions on UNSC reform, the General Assembly decided to include in its next session’s agenda the item entitled question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the UNSC and other related matters.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he “very much hopes that member states, in their wisdom, will bring the process of Security Council reform to a result”.

Guterres confident that member states will bring Security Council reform process to a result

The UN chief “has been extremely vocal, especially lately, on the need for reform, notably on the need to find a (permanent) seat for an African country on the Security Council,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in response to a question at the regular noon briefing at UN Headquarters in New York.

Full-scale negotiations to reform the UNSC began in the UNGA in February 2009 on five clusters — the categories of membership, the question of veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged UNSC, and working methods of the council and its relationship with the UNGA.

Despite a general agreement on enlarging the council, as part of the UN reform process, member states remain divided over the details.

The so-called Group of Four — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan — which seek permanent seats on the council have shown no flexibility in their push for expanding the UNSC by 10 seats, with six additional permanent and four non-permanent members.

On the other hand, the Italy/Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group, which firmly opposes additional permanent members, has proposed a new category of members — not permanent members — with longer duration in terms and a possibility to get re-elected.

The Security Council is currently composed of five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members elected to serve for two years.

In his remarks, Ambassador Jadoon also called for more active consultation with regional and sub-regional groups including the African Union, the Arab Group and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

He said it was vital to ensure increased re­­presentation of small and medium-sized countries in the council and treat Africa as a special case to redress the historical injustice.

Ambassador Jadoon noted that this year’s IGN co-chairs — permanent representatives Tareq Albanai of Kuwait and Alexander Marschik of Austria — had led to a significant expansion in the convergences and reduction of divergences on the five interlinked clusters.

“The co-chairs were also successful in promoting consensus, despite the obstructions from a particular country (obviously referring to India) on the language to be inserted on UNSC reform in the ‘Pact for the Future’,” he said.

The pact, which is expected to be adopted at a summit next month, aims to be a roadmap for strengthening the UN’s ability to address some of the world’s biggest future challenges. “The discussions on the language for the Pact of the Future illustrated the difficulties in text-based negotiations in the absence of convergence on the 5 clusters,” the Pakistani envoy said, adding that text-based negotiations, as demanded by India, cannot commence, nor artificial deadlines be set until there is full convergence on the 5 clusters.

“This episode, however, revealed who among member states is responsible for impeding and obstructing the progress on Security Council reform,” he added.

Ambassador Jadoon welcomed the accords this year, including that all five clusters are strongly interlinked, and therefore negotiations should be based on the principle that: “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”; to ensure the equitable geographical representation of all regions, including cross-regional groups, such as the Arab and OIC groups; and that, if the veto cannot be abolished, it must be restricted, and not used against proposals to prevent/end genocide and other mass atrocities.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2024