UN Security Council reform discussions intensify
Regional-UN, Politics, 7/15/2005

The United Nations Security Council reforms are facing in the next several weeks a critical period in which the shape of the UN Security Council reform proposals will be finalized for the UN September summit.

One of the main proposals for the UN Security Council reforms is that proposed by the G4 group that includes Germany, Japan, India, and Brazil along with some 30 sponsors. The proposal calls for raising the number of the Security Council members to 25 seats, in which six of these seats will be permanent.

Informed G4 officials told ArabicNews.com today that the proposal needs the support of the African Union countries for success. The 53 African Union countries have their own proposal, in which they ask for 3 permanent seats for the African continent, one more seat than the G4 proposal offers. Also, the African countries are asking for the right of "veto power" to be granted to these countries, which the G4 proposal does not include.

These two differences between the G4 and the African Union proposals will need to be resolved.

It is possible that the African Union will hold another summit to make changes that would ensure passage of the reform, that may be one way of dealing with this issue, while another way may be for the African Union to release its members from the obligation to vote as a bloc, as has the European, Asian and Latin blocks have decided to do. This would allow each African country to vote as it wish, and thus, support for the G4 proposal will pass with the needed 128 votes (2/3 majority). The G4 official indicating that the African Union proposal chances of passage are very low in its current form.

Some of the other possibilities are to include countries such as Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Mexico, Canada, Pakistan, and Indonesia, South Korea, countries that have a substantial population size and economy. This will cause the expansion of the council beyond 25 members, an option that may have to be considered as well, and may greatly strengthen the democratic nature of the council with such inclusions.

There is a preference to keep the number of members around 25 the G4 official said.

However, there is clearly no magic number, as long as the reform gets the needed support. In the enlargement reforms of the UN Security Council in 1963, only one permanent member voted in favor of the reforms, but in the process of ratification after the required 2/3 members approval was obtained, all five permanent members countries eventually ratified the reforms within a 2 years period, and the reforms were successful, despite the initial skepticism that surrounded the success of the reform process.

Another possibility to garner even greater support, is to require the removal of the veto power from all Council members, and in the process truly make the body a democratic institution. This option has the disadvantage that it will face great opposition by all five permanent members who have this power, but also, this option has the possibility of garnering a great majority of the UN member nations, which may even make harder for the five permanent members to keep a strangle hold on the UN Security Council, a most undemocratic institution in the views of many.

Whether the UN adopts the G4 proposal or the African Union proposal or a compromise between any of the offered proposals, the process will become clear in the next several weeks. The G4 official told ArabicNews.com that no one country wants to be seen as blocking the UN Security Council reforms. Reforms which various world leaders have indicated that they want to urgently see done.

Previous Stories:
  Pressing for enlarged Security Council, Annan cites 'democracy deficit'   (7/14/2005)
  US faces possibility of being expelled from the United Nations   (7/13/2005)
  African Union wants end to veto power in Security Council reforms   (7/8/2005)

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