India and expansion of the UN Security Council: Difficult but not impossible

India’s Permanent representative at the UN, Ruchira Kamboj, recently presented a bold, credible, and forceful set of arguments at the sixth round of Intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) at the UN General Assembly calling for reforming the UN Security Council. She not only articulated the impeccable credential of India to be a permanent member of the Security Council, but also championed the cause of the Global South seeking its representation in this body as well.

A vast majority of UN members, including four permanent members of the UN Security Council, have supported Indian candidature in bilateral meetings as well multilateral forums. India’s diplomatic skill demonstrated in the recent G20 summit in truly representing the voice of the Global South and facilitating the membership of the African Union in G20 will someday succeed in bringing about reforms of the UN before this world body becomes irrelevant to address the challenges of today’s world. Yet, the hurdles are many and untiring diplomatic rendezvous are required to realise the goal.

More from Opinion

Sergio Gor’s senate hearing signals the future of Indo-American ties How Trump’s ‘War on Drugs’ buildup against Venezuela has a hidden agenda

For decades members of the United Nations have been debating various aspects of reforming the United Nations, including expansion of the number of permanent and non-permanent members of the Security Council. There is no UN member that contests the idea of UN reforms. At the same time, there is no consensus among member countries involved in negotiations for bringing about necessary reforms in the structure of the United Nations.

It is understood by one and all that the United Nations, which was created in 1945 to prevent war, maintain peace and promote international cooperation to achieve those goals, has survived till date, yet it needs serious reforms to remain useful and effective in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

How army remains Pakistan’s biggest business house

60 years on, why 1965 India–Pakistan war still matters

The United Nations took birth in the aftermath of the devastating World War II, soon became a battleground of Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, could do little to resolve armed conflicts where any one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council was involved, and often became dysfunctional to address several other critical issues due to overuse of the veto power by the P5 members.

The end of the Cold War with Soviet disintegration in December 1991 raised hopes that the world would be henceforth more peaceful. The only superpower in the world, the United States, basked in the glory of winning the Cold War, bragged about a unipolar new world order, yet members of the United Nations felt encouraged to reassess the role and relevance of the UN in the new context of a post-Cold War era. One year after the Soviet demise the General Assembly created a working group to address the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly the Security Council. There were several meetings, yet there was little progress in its efforts. About 15 years later in the year 2008, the UN formally authorised it to begin intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) to address this issue.

India has been one of the prominent candidates seeking a position of permanent membership in a reformed UN Security Council and has teamed up with Brazil, Germany and Japan to form the Group of 4 that eminently qualify to become permanent members of the UN Security Council. The G4 has proposed a model membership system in the UN Security Council where six new permanent members — two from Africa, two from Asia Pacific, one from Latin America and Caribbean and one from Europe; and four or five non-permanent elected members are added.

One of the major stumbling blocks to the G4 proposal has been the so-called Coffee Club that was formed in 1995 under the initiative of Italy’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. The Coffee Club was expanded to a working group subsequently and came to be known as Uniting for Consensus (UfC) in the UN General Assembly. It has come up with its own set of proposals and the most significant part of its proposal is opposition to expansion of the number of permanent members in the UN Security Council! What the UfC proposes is enlargement of the number of only non-permanent members in the UN Security Council to include six seats from Africa, five seats from Asia Pacific, four from Latin America and the Caribbean three from Western Europe and two from Eastern Europe.

Members in this group include aspiring candidates and/or regional rivals of the G4 and some of them are Argentina, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, Egypt, and Turkey and, more significantly, China and Indonesia are the observers. Will China ever endorse Japan and India as a permanent UNSC member in the present geopolitical circumstances in the Indo-Pacific? Who can believe that Pakistan can ever tolerate India’s permanent membership in the UNSC? Same argument goes for Argentina and Brazil and perhaps Egypt and South Africa.

Given this backdrop, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is spot on in observing that while India will be a member of the UN Security Council once it is reformed, lots of hard work is indispensable to realise the goal. It needs to be underlined that the UN Security Council reform can take place only after amending the UN Charter. And the procedure for amendment of the Charter requires support of the two-thirds of the members of the United Nations, including the backing of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council! Thus, India’s diplomatic skill will continue to be under test.

The writer is founder chairperson of Kalinga Institute Indo-Pacific Studies and former Professor at JNU. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.