Security Council Reform: When and How It Can Be Done
Opinion by Sukehiro Hasegawa, Kerstin Leitner and Georgios Kostakos
January 14, 2025
The Security Council can be reformed, but how? The authors, a trio of ex-UN officials, suggest a two-step approach, focusing on five “key issues”: the size of an expanded body, membership categories, regional representation, veto-related questions, and the relationship between the Council and the General Assembly. Here, some ambassadors gathered in the Council before it voted on admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN on April 18, 2024. The United States vetoed the draft resolution.
The start of 2025 finds the world in turmoil, conflict, and suffering, with the United Nations feeble and unable to have a positive impact beyond humanitarian relief. The world would stand a better chance of achieving sustainable peace and prosperity if the Security Council were functioning as foreseen in the UN Charter.
The world leaders adopted the Pact for the Future at the Summit of the Future on Sept. 22, 2024. They affirmed their commitment to reforming the Security Council to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic, and accountable (Action 39) and to strengthening its relationship with the General Assembly (Action 41), working in the framework of the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) as a priority and without delay (Action 40).
To assist the relevant negotiations in achieving substantive results, we propose a two-step approach to Security Council reform, building on five key issues on which the IGN has focused. They are the size of an enlarged Security Council, membership categories, regional representation, veto-related questions, and the relationship between the Security Council and the General Assembly.
The first step would be a General Assembly decision in September 2025, when the UN celebrates its 80th anniversary, on the enlargement of the Security Council and the kind and distribution of the new Council seats. This process should culminate within a few years or by the 85th anniversary of the UN in 2030. The second step would be to convene a general conference based on Article 109 of the UN Charter and make a more comprehensive reform of the Council and the UN as a whole by the end of the UN centennial anniversary year, 2045, at the latest.
There have been suggestions for two new Security Council permanent seats going to African states to realize the Africans’ aspiration to be recognized as essential players in the UN. We understand this as a political and emotional rather than a rational call, similar to the longstanding insistence of Germany and Japan, along with Brazil and India (the “G4”), to become permanent Council members. This approach, though, would reinforce the oligopolistic nature of the Council. In an organization whose purpose is to maintain peace and security throughout the globe, the Council members should not only be representative of their own country and region. They should also be accountable to the entire UN membership and the people of the world, for whom peace is a public good and the basis for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and more.
As part of the first step that we suggest, Council enlargement models proposed by various groups should be put before the General Assembly as draft resolutions for voting. If none of the models are adopted, the IGN should set up a drafting group of member states to develop a model for adoption by the General Assembly. Such a model could foresee an increase of the Council membership by 10 five-year renewable seats; the distribution of the 10 new seats to the regions, which would also include the League of Arab States as a region; ways to ensure that regional distribution also allows the representation of key “functional” or “interest” groups of member states, like those of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs); and criteria for the election of countries to the 10 new seats, such as their contributions to international peace and security as well as to other aspects of the UN’s work, and having the trust and confidence of at least two-thirds of the entire UN membership.
As the second step of our Council reform proposal, the five permanent seats could be converted to 10-year renewable term seats without any regional requirement and without the veto prerogative. The same criteria as above would apply for re-election, and a newly created Parliamentary Assembly representing the people of member states could advise the General Assembly on countries’ records. Regional organizations like the African Union, European Union, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the Arab League could also be considered for these five seats.
After such a two-step reform, the UN could start its second century with a Council of 25 members, none of them permanent and none veto-wielding but instead elected: five for 10-year renewable terms, 10 for five-year renewable terms and 10 for two-year nonrenewable terms, with the last two categories subject to geographical distribution.
We appreciate the significant progress made by the IGN so far and call on them to rise above the Westphalian mentality and take the first step toward a more legitimate Security Council that is representative, effective, and accountable to all the people of the UN worldwide.
