INR Optional Pap.. Assignme... rewrite

profilePe0512
United_Nations_Security_Council_Reform.docx

Optional Paper

Peter Petschner

Prof John Oates

INR3502

Running Head: UN SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

1

UN SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

2

11/13/2021

United Nations Security Council Reform

1.1. Introduction

The UNSC United Nations Security Council is the only global organization with the right to legally adopt binding resolutions for maintaining international peace and security. These global institutions are responsible for authorizing the use of force to that end to maintain peace and security. UN was created in 1945 after the Second World War, and there has been a long debate on the representation of the UN (Cox, 2009). This global institution is one of the institutions that face difficulties or challenges while making decisions and organizing the organization's structure. These challenges have been constant for the last decade. There have been many incidents when the people questioned the role of the UN; the UNSC reform was needed to bring some changes and make the global institution one of the institutes that can solve the global problems without any biased decision making. The decision-making of the UNSC should be based on justice and equality. The members of the UN have presented several proposals for the UNSC reform, but all these proposals were not successfully implemented. There is a large majority of the UN members who are in favor of Reform. These members are concerned about the role of the UN to maintain regional equality, efficiency, and representation by the individual member states (Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti, 2013). This report will discuss what these reforms are, the arguments in support or in against of this Reform are discussed in this report.

1.2. Purpose of UNSC

The main purpose of the UN is to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among the different nations, achieve international cooperation to solve international problems and become a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of the common goals.

1.2.1. Structure

The UN has six main organs; five of these organs include The General Assembly, the Security Council, The Economic and Social Council, The Trusteeship Council, and The Secretariat are located at the UN headquarters in New York. The sixth organ, The International Court of Justice, is located in The Hague in the Netherlands.

1.2.2. Members

The UN Council is comprised of 15 members, including permanent and non-permanent members. The permanent members of the UN include China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The ten non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly for two years include Estonia, India, Kenya, Ireland, Norway, Tunisia, Niger, Mexico, Vietnam, Saint Vincent, and the Grenadines.

2. Arguments

The lack of formal Reform of the UNSC seems puzzling the tremendous shifts in global order since its establishment. Many states demanded equitable representation for the UNSC, and they criticized and raised questions on the P5 dominance (Hosli and Dorfler, 2020). Several arguments are in favor of UNSC reforms. There is a need to bring UNSC reforms because this global institution requires a decision-making process without any biasness and the members who can make decisions based on true facts and figures. The General Assembly of the UN should maintain its vitality and focus on the compelling issues faced by the people globally. The UNSC needs to be proactive in the future and contribute most to the organization financially, diplomatically, and militarily. The people should not raise questions on the legitimacy, transparency, and justice of the UNSC (Latilla and Ylonen, 2019).

2.1. Need for UNSC Reform

According to Part 4 of the “Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.” presented by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in (2004), the following are the needs for UNSC reform. He has proposed changes in the UNSC by discussing the following points:

· General Assembly has lost its vitality and often fails to focus effectively on the compelling issues of today.

· Security Council needs more legitimacy, credibility, and representation to do all the work on demand.

· A major institutional gap must be focused on while addressing the countries under stress and the countries emerging from any type of conflict.

· Security Council needs to work with the regional and subregional organizations.

· UN should be focused on bringing new institutional arrangements to address the economic and social threats to international security.

· The Commission on Human Rights needs to be legitimate.

· A more professional and organized Secretariat is needed for the UN.

All the above reasons show that the UNSC reform was needed to improve the working and decision-making of the UNSC.

2.2. Three proposals for Reform

Several proposals were presented for UNSC reform by the governments. But the three proposals that were discussed by most of the members and that changes were needed for UNSC reform.

2.2.1. Size of reformed UNSC

Most of the UN members were concerned about the large size of UN members. Most of the countries supported the reformed size of UNSC to remain either 25 or 26 seats. This proposal has strong global support from many countries. Some of the countries that are a member of the UNSC supported a very smaller size of UNSC to remain either 15 or 16 seats. But this proposal was not accepted by the majority (Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti, 2013). The high-level panel of the UN members has also contended that the enlargement of members would bring a corresponding expansion to both of the resources available to implement the Council decisions and to implement the will of countries. There is no doubt that there has been a lack of resources to implement the Council resolutions. Much of the debate is on the equity, balance, access, and representation of the UN members. These things matter in the legitimacy of the political decision-making body (Edward Luck, 2011). The questions for the eventual size of the reformed Council were in the debate for long ago. These questions were raised because it is generally agreed that once the additional non-permanent members have been added to the Council, then these members must also join the additional non-permanent members of the Council. This argument was made to support the representations of the members from Eastern Europe and Latin America because there was a risk of these members being marginalized in the new body (Tharoor, 2011).

2.2.2. Permanent and Non-permanent seats

Besides the size of the UNSC members, it was also important to distinguish the permanent and non-permanent seats. According to a research data collection, the 133 states generally support the creation of new permanent seats. AU African Union has become the largest unified group that preferred the creation of new permanent seats. The G4 is the second-largest support group, and together with AU, they both preferred the creation of new permanent seats. Both groups combine a group share of 40% of UNGA membership. On the contrary, the support for new non-permanent seats demonstrates the enlargement of the UNSC (Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti, 2013). A small number of UN states also favored the creation of a new category for the seats named semi-permanent seats for the members of larger states or any other special category of a smaller state. Moreover, when considering the equity, the situation becomes unjust for the countries whose financial contributions are larger than the 4-5 permanent members of the UN. For example, Japan and Germany have remained the largest contributor to the UN budget, but these countries are still referred to as enemy states in the UN Charter (Tharoor, 2011).

2.2.3. Veto privilege

The veto privilege is also a major concern while discussing the changes or reforms for the UNSC. There are significant variations in the member-state preferences for the veto privilege. There are many options for the role of veto within the reformed UNSC. These options include the limitation, termination, and expansion of veto privileges (Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti, 2013). G4 proposed no expansion of veto privilege to new permanent members, and they do not challenge the privileged position of P5 permanent members having veto power (Edward Luck, 2011). While on the other hand, the AU aims to implement an extension of the veto right to new permanent members (Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti, 2013).

2.3. Counter Arguments

Some scholars have presented the counterargument for the reforms to UNSC. They presented their points which are against the Reform for the UNSC. According to Bosco (2014), P5 in key respects represents a concert of major powers, and that assessing the impact of P5 is appropriate. The serving of P5 on the Council deepens high-level diplomatic contacts between the P5 members. Some states do not prefer to bring any reform to the UNSC, and they think that the current working and the representation of P5 is going well and there is no need to bring change in it.

3. Recommendations

Some recommendations are suggested to support that why and how UNSC should be reformed. The arguments in favor of the Reform for UNSC will be presented below:

· In my opinion, it is important to bring Reform to the UNSC, and changes must be proposed by all the members of the UN. These members should introduce what changes they want to implement along with the procedure of implementation.

· All the UN members should consider the proposals presented by all the members for having as equal importance as other proposals have. All the changes must have balances such as balance between different interests, balance between practical and vision, balance between power and legitimacy, balance between particularity and universality, balance between rights, balance between neutrality and enforcement, and many other balances as discussed by Bruce Russett in (1996).

· All the UN states should provide solid reasons or arguments for the change they require; for example, if they want to bring change in the size of the UNSC members, they should state a reason for why larger or smaller sizes are preferred by them. If they want the change in the permanent and non-permanent seats of the UN, then they must state why they want to increase the permanent seats or non-permanent seats. They should state their reasons of preference for permanent seats and for non-permanent seats and the benefits related to the increase in permanent seats and increase in non-permanent seats.

· There should be transparency and legitimacy followed in the UN, and all the members should enjoy equal power. The UN states should also enjoy their power according to their contributions to the development of the UN. For example, if some countries are contributing to the budget of the UN, then they must have equal power in the decision-making process of the UN. But the overall decision-making should be based on justice and equity (Ian Hurd, 2008).

· UN members should focus on the issues and support the right decision. They should give importance to issues related to the violence of humanity. If some powerful countries are overruling the underdevelopment country without any reason, then the UN members should take strict actions against them. The Reform is required to make the decision making of UN biased free. No single member of the UN should show his or her biasness towards any country. They should focus on the main issue and take the right decision.

· The reforms are required to improve the legitimacy, effectiveness, inequality, exclusiveness, and representation of the UN. This global institute was created to solve the issues of the different countries at an international level, and mostly the decisions are taken to provide a just and fair stance on humanitarian issues.

· The introduction of Reform is also necessary to improve all the shortcomings of the UNSC. The weaknesses and shortcomings of the UN must also be resolved to improve its effectiveness. All the other countries will follow the decisions taken by the UN if this global institute makes decisions on merit and provide support to all the people who are affected by any illegal activity such as Wars without any reason and the countries where the people are suffering from famine, and the other countries are overruling them.

3.1. How and why UNSC should be reformed?

All the reforms are required to improve the overall effectiveness of the UNSC and to bring justice globally. These reforms can be implemented after getting approval from all the governments of all the member countries of the UN. All the members should take part in suggesting any change, all the proposals for change and Reform must be checked by a committee specially formed for this issue, and then the committee should provide a report on how all these proposals are valid or non-valid with proper justifications or reasons. The committee should be formed without any biasness. The members of the committee should act transparently, and they should not harm the legitimacy of the UN. This committee will include representatives from all over the world who will decide which proposals are necessary and how these proposals can be processed and how change is implemented in the UNSC.

3.2. Conclusion

In conclusion, reforms are necessary as they improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of a system. The Reform for UNSC is also important as it will provide assistance to improve the overall operations of the UN. UN members should focus on the issues and support the right decision. The UN states should also enjoy their power according to their contributions to the development of the UN.

References

Bosco, David. 2014. “Assessing the UN Security Council: A Concert Perspective.” Global Governance, Vol. 20, pp. 545-61.

Thomas Dorfler and Madeline Holsti. 2013. “Reforming the UNSC.” In Routledge Handbook of International Organization, chapter 28.

Edward Luck. 2011. “Chapter 10: Reform, Adaptation and Evolution,” in UN Security Council: Practice and Promise, Routledge, pp. 111-126.

Ian Hurd. 2008. “Myths of Membership: The Politics of Legitimation in UN Security Council Reform.” Global Governance, Vol 14, pp. 199-217.

Part 4 of the “Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.” 2004. A/59/565, pp. 64-69. [This is the report where then Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed two possible models for Security Council reform]

Lättilä, V. and Ylönen, A. 2019. “United Nations Security Council Reform Revisited: A Proposal.” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 30(1), pp.164-186.

Hosli, Madeleine O., and Thomas Dörfler. 2020. “The United Nations Security Council: History, Current Composition, and Reform Proposals.” In The Changing Global Order, pp. 299-320. Springer.

Bruce Russett. 1996. “Ten Balances for Weighing UN Reform Proposals.” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 111, No. 2

Tharoor, S. 2011. “Security Council Reform: Past, Present, and Future.” Ethics & International Affairs, 25(4), pp.397-406.

Cox, Brian. 2009. “United Nations Security Council reform: Collected Proposals and Possible Consequences.” South Carolina Journal of Int'l Law & Business, Vol. 6, pp. 89-128.