Muhammad Ramish Chaudhry
In April this year, China and Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz amid tensions involving Iran, Israel and the United States. The draft was supported by eleven Council members and prepared by Gulf states, yet two permanent members blocked it. Compared with the Council’s paralysis over Ukraine or Gaza, the episode was relatively minor.
Even so, it exposed a deeper structural problem. An institution designed to manage disagreement among great powers becomes ineffective once those powers themselves disagree. As the international system grows more multipolar, such deadlock is becoming increasingly common.
That reality has revived demands to reform the Security Council. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly argued that the body responsible for maintaining international peace still reflects the global balance of power in 1945 rather than today’s distribution of population, economic influence and geopolitical weight. During Council debates this year, he observed that the world has changed profoundly while the Council has not. India echoed this view, arguing that a body issuing binding decisions cannot remain credible while permanently excluding major powers and entire regions.
The imbalance is striking. Asia has only one permanent member despite accounting for most of the world’s population. Africa and Latin America have none, although Africa represents more than a quarter of UN membership and dominates the Council’s own agenda. Germany and Japan remain outside the permanent membership despite being among the organisation’s largest financial contributors. While a broad majority of member states now agree that reform is necessary, consensus ends where the details begin.
The leading campaign comes from the G4 comprising Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, each supporting the others’ bid for permanent membership. Frustrated by years of negotiations without even a formal negotiating text, the group has proposed that new permanent members temporarily forgo veto rights as a compromise.
Africa has advanced its own position through the African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus, demanding at least two permanent seats with full veto rights alongside additional elected seats. The argument is straightforward. African conflicts occupy much of the Council’s agenda, yet no African state holds permanent influence over its decisions. Even within Africa, however, competition over who would occupy such seats remains unresolved.
Standing against both proposals is the Uniting for Consensus coalition, which includes Pakistan, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, South Korea and Turkey. Rather than creating new permanent members, it favours expanding the category of elected, renewable seats. Pakistan argues that additional permanent seats would simply create new centres of privilege. Yet regional politics are impossible to ignore. Pakistan opposes India’s bid, Italy resists Germany, Mexico and Argentina oppose Brazil, and South Korea rejects Japan. The strongest resistance to aspiring permanent members often comes from their nearest regional rivals.
The permanent five have little reason to embrace meaningful reform. The United States, Britain and France have expressed varying degrees of support for expanding permanent membership, while China backs greater African representation without endorsing African veto rights. Russia speaks of improving effectiveness rather than altering the balance of power. All support reform in principle, but none has shown any willingness to dilute the veto, the Council’s ultimate source of influence.
Institutional barriers make reform even more difficult. Amending the UN Charter requires approval by two thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by two thirds of member states, including all five permanent members. Each permanent member therefore possesses an effective veto over reform itself. Unsurprisingly, negotiations that began in 2009 have produced discussion papers rather than genuine bargaining.
The consequences extend beyond diplomatic frustration. Liberal institutionalist theory suggests that international institutions retain legitimacy only when their structures reflect contemporary political realities. As the gap between the Council’s composition and today’s distribution of power widens, confidence in its authority steadily declines. States increasingly judge the Council by its inability to respond consistently to crises rather than by its formal legal powers.
Other forums have gradually filled part of that vacuum. Successive G20 presidencies led by Indonesia, India, Brazil and South Africa have pushed questions of global governance to the forefront, while BRICS has increasingly called for comprehensive UN reform. Neither forum can replace the Security Council’s unique legal authority, yet both illustrate how influence is gradually shifting beyond the institution created in 1945.
The debate over Security Council reform therefore presents a paradox. Support for reform is broader today than at any point in the organisation’s history, yet agreement on its substance remains elusive. The competing demands of the G4, the African Union, Uniting for Consensus and the permanent five continue to cancel one another out.
The most likely outcome is neither sweeping reform nor institutional collapse but gradual irrelevance. The Security Council may remain at the centre of the UN Charter while an increasing share of global governance moves elsewhere. Whether that amounts to institutional failure or simply the reality of a multipolar world will determine the Council’s relevance in the decades ahead.
The writer is pursuing International Relations at the National Defence University in Islamabad and writes on diverse issues, with a focus on Foreign Policy Analysis and State Governance. He can be reached at www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-ramish-chaudhry-901136263
