Taleesan Abdullah
It is a very surprising fact that the African region is responsible for the world’s largest youth populations, and with significant importance in United Nations agendas, having twenty-two out of thirty-five press statements issued by the UN Security Council concerning Africa, yet not one of the African states holds a permanent seat in the United Nations where these statements were negotiated. The region which is most discussed by the United Nations has the least formal power to shape its future.
While discussing the future of the United Nations, you can not leave Africa out and, this precise weakness regarding lack of power for the region is exactly what is one of the crucial factors influencing the negativities in the future path of the United Nations, because downsizing Africa means downsizing the major youth population of the world and the United Nations would not want the upcoming generations to view it as an assembly of discrimination or an unequal association.
The question of a multipolar world is brought into existence when the legitimacy of a multilateral system of the United Nations is questioned. In the Ezulwini Consensus 2005, two decades ago, in the name of the African Union, the African states articulated a unified position in the United Nations, which called for two permanent seats with veto power and additional non-permanent seats for Africa. Africa, being the largest bloc in the United Nations, with fifty-four states, also contributing largely to the peacekeeping operations, is still without a permanent seat, undermining the legitimacy of the multilateral system.
The global status quo treats this problem of Africa as a technical puzzle, and resistance has been from the existing permanent members fearing that any reform in this scenario will only dilute and weaken their own influence. However, the G4 bloc of Germany, Japan, Brazil and India has proposed a model with an expansion of the bloc to 25 or 26 states, reserving two seats for Africa, but the existence of several credible plans is subject to delay.
The Security Council has spent the past two years deadlocked on Gaza and Ukraine, being unable to act decisively on the two most consequential conflicts. Power has migrated outward into coalitions and parallel structures built by great powers and no longer needs the Security Council consensus before acting. The institution has lost authoritative power and has been constantly overlooked in recent times.
This problem needs a resolution, and critics have warned that more permanent members only lead to more vetoes and more paralysis. Africa also has signaled openness about holding the veto rather than multiplying it, stating that if a member state chose to retain the veto, then it must be extended to all new permanent members, ensuring basic fairness.
The Security Council’s current dysfunction is a result of the existing five vetoes wielding their veto on the very important issues that the world needs resolved. Adding African seats does not create that problem; rather, it ends an arrangement in which the states least accountable to global opinion hold all the power to obstruct it.
It is a legitimate argument with consequences. An institution claiming the authority to police the peace of the world cannot go by without ensuring fairness to the region it rules the most. African issues are discussed as everyday news in the Security Council and the United Nations, and still, the people of Africa, most affected by the rules, have the least power over them.
After eighty years, if the United Nations cannot solve an injustice this well-documented, then the failure says less about the African issue and more about the weakness of the United Nations and the Security Council, meaning the lack of resolve, power, and authority to make any reform at all. If the system continues to remain as it has been for the past eighty years, with geopolitical global issues such as Gaza and Ukraine unresolved, then it would be a clear picture of what has become of the United Nations, and whether it has the capacity for reform at all.
The legitimacy of the United Nations system and its relevance will be decided by the performance of the next decade, where either the eighty-year-old question finally gets answered, or it is again debated after another twenty years in an empty room, with no genuine responses, other than the echoing walls.
Taleesan Abdullah is a research intern at PolicyEast, a New York-based think tank. He provides insights into global economic issues. He is currently a third-year BS Economics student at Bahria University, Islamabad.
