The new fight to reform the UN’s colonial-era world order

(CNN) — In a city known for its private members clubs battling for exclusivity, one gilded room in Manhattan reigns supreme: a powerful club of countries within the United Nations headquarters that has resisted adding a new member for nearly eight decades.

The UN Security Council has been dominated by just five countries (the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom) since its inception from the ashes of World War II, when much of the world was still under colonial rule.

Today, countries around the world get to take turns in the council as non-permanent members, but no country in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America or the Caribbean has the permanent members’ crucial veto power.

The veto allows permanent members, known as the P5, to block any resolution, ranging from peacekeeping missions to sanctions, in defense of their national interests and foreign policy decisions.

But there is a renewed push to reform this colonial-era world order.

As world leaders prepare to return to the UN headquarters for the annual General Assembly this September, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio has reiterated Africa’s longstanding pitch to reform the council, including two new permanent member spots for African countries.

African issues take up nearly 50% of the council’s daily business, and the bulk of its resolutions concerning peace and security. The continent is also home to more than a quarter of UN member states and more than a billion people but remains “grossly underrepresented in this vital organ of the UN,” Bio told a high-level meeting in August. Sierra Leone represents the African Group at the United Nations, comprised of the 54 countries from the continent.

A senior diplomat at the UN told CNN that Africa currently holds a lot of sway among the P5 countries, the final arbiters on any reform, as Russia and America scramble for influence in the continent.

The council, responsible for maintaining global peace and security, has the power to deploy peacekeeping missions, authorize the use of force, impose sanctions, and pass resolutions – many of which have enjoyed great effectiveness despite high-profile deadlocks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

More than a dozen peer-reviewed studies have found that the bulk of UN peace-keeping missions have helped curb violence and reduce conflict in countries such as Sierra Leone.

The yearslong push to reform the UN’s most powerful body is gaining political momentum: US President Joe Biden even made the case for permanent seats for Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean during a speech to the UN in 2022. Some diplomats are optimistic that September’s general debate – when national leaders address the assembly and which the UN hopes will be used as a critical moment to reflect on the future of the multilateral system – will see consensus around a roadmap for Security Council reform.

The summit’s draft document, ‘Pact for the Future,’ acknowledges the need to fix the “historical injustice against Africa as a priority” and Africa’s special status in negotiations going forward.

“For the first time, we are now seeing movement,” says Alexander Marschik, Austria’s UN envoy, who co-chairs an intergovernmental group on negotiations for the Security Council. The group has been discussing reform for up to 20 years, he told CNN.

While September is unlikely to bring an expansion of the council, “we might see a track, a blueprint on how to get the expansion done in reasonable time,” according to Marschik. On Tuesday, the General Assembly adopted an oral decision reaffirming its central role concerning council reform, and voted to include the issue in the upcoming session’s agenda.

Growing stalemate

Deep divisions among the permanent members have led to growing frustration with the Security Council’s inability to stem the world’s biggest problems, from bloody conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, to the threat of nuclear weapons and climate change.

“US and Russia often exercise their veto to either protect a client state, in the case of Israel or Syria, or to protect their own national interests, as in the case with Russia vetoing on Ukraine,” Anjali Dayal, a UN expert and an international politics assistant professor at Fordham University, told CNN.

France and the United Kingdom have limited their use of veto power since 1989. But the post-Cold-War years have seen the US, Russia, and China use the chamber to “exonerate their allies and shield themselves from the consequences of their unpopular foreign policy decisions,” she added.

Sierra Leone’s foreign minister believes more equity in the council would help break the gridlock and lend it more credibility.

“There are many conflicts where the UN Security Council has actually come up with resolutions that are not readily implemented, which shows the inefficiency of the council at the moment,” Timothy Musa Kabba told CNN at the country’s UN mission office in New York.

He added that in “a world that is more diverse, that is more globalized, interconnected, there is need for the council to be democratized for representation based on geography.”

Beyond the five veto-wielding powers, there are ten non-permanent seats, three of which go to Africa, on the council. The non-permanent seats don’t have veto powers, and they are elected by region by the General Assembly for a two-year term.

There’s agreement among the council’s permanent members and diplomats in the halls of the UN’s iconic midtown Manhattan complex that it is time to evolve. But rivalries and national interests among the UN’s 193 member states have blocked attempts to change as they struggle to agree on which countries to include, the scale of the enlargement of permanent and non-permanent members; and what their powers on the council will look like.

Brazil and India, for example, would like permanent spots on the council, a prospect that would not go down well with India’s longtime rivals, Pakistan and China, or Argentina and Mexico in Brazil’s case, said one UN diplomat.

Decades-long debate

Beyond the African Union push for two permanent and an additional two non-permanent seats on the council, there are at least five other constellations of UN member states that have their own separate ideas on what reform should look like.

“This is a conversation that’s been happening for decades,” Daniel Forti, Senior Analyst for UN Advocacy and Research at the Crisis Group, told CNN. “Diplomats haven’t agreed on a formula on how to expand the council in a way that gets a two-thirds majority plus Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to all agree on the same formulation.”

There’s “more political momentum to this, but it doesn’t mean we’re necessarily any step closer to achieving reform,” he added.

For example, any attempt to remove veto powers from the P5 would be “non-starter” and is “not something the big three would ever agree with,” a senior UN diplomat told CNN, meaning the US, Russia and China.

But what could work is “lowercase reform,” say experts and diplomats, who point to a 2022 initiative tabled by Liechtenstein that was adopted by the General Assembly. It mandates that any veto case by the P5 be debated in the General Assembly. While the process cannot overturn a veto, it raises the political cost of the P5 exercising their unilateral power.

Enlargement is possible, say advocates, pointing to 1963 when the council was enlarged from 10 to 15 member states. “So maybe, on the other hand, maybe this is an opportunity,” said a senior diplomat at the UN. “I think the fact that people are talking about it, means there’s more traction,” the diplomat added.

“But we’re a long way away from real, operationalized Security Council reform.”

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