UNITED NATIONS, Apr 16: India has underscored the need for a reformed UN Security Council that better reflects the geographical and developmental diversity of the United Nations today, emphasising that the majority of the world body’s membership supports calls for expanding permanent seats in the powerful organ.
India has been at the forefront, especially leading the Global South, demanding reforms in the United Nations and seeking a place as a permanent member of the 15-member UN Security Council.
“India is in favour of expansion of UN Security Council membership in both the permanent and non-permanent categories, as this is the only way to achieve genuine reform of the Security Council and make it legitimate, representative, responsive and effective,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj said Monday.
Addressing the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) meeting on Security Council Reform on Co-Chairs Elements Paper, Kamboj underlined the need for “a reformed Security Council that better reflects the geographical and developmental diversity of the United Nations today.
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“A Security Council where voices of developing countries and unrepresented regions, including Africa, Latin America and the vast majority of Asia and Pacific, also find their due place at the horseshoe table. And for this, an expansion of the Council in both categories of membership is absolutely essential.”
The current UNSC comprises five permanent members (the US, the UK, China, France and Russia) and 10 non-permanent members. She noted that some member states keep pushing the argument that expansion in the permanent categories of the UNSC would be ‘undemocratic’.
“We fail to understand how something that is clearly being called for by the majority of the membership would be ‘undemocratic’. We cannot continue to be hostage to a minority in the IGN,” she said, in an apparent reference to countries like Pakistan, which has been opposing the expansion in permanent categories of the UNSC.
Kamboj noted that expansion in the permanent categories is a position supported by the majority of Member States. “This fact is on record,” she said as she cited the 2015 Framework Document, on the issue of “Categories of Membership”. A total of 113 Member States, out of 122 who submitted their positions in the Framework Document, supported expansion in both of the existing categories specified in the Charter.
“This means that more than 90 per cent of the written submissions in the document were in favour of expansion in both categories of membership specified in the Charter. On the contrary, longer-term non-permanent seats which was an idea mooted during the inception of the UN, to only be discarded due to its ineffectiveness cannot be treated as a convergence, as it is only backed by a handful of member states,” she said.
The Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group that includes Pakistan and China is opposed to the creation of new permanent members in the Security Council. The UfC model entails a Security Council with 26 seats, with an increase only in the non-permanent, elected members. (PTI)
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