Uniting for Consensus group planning on Security Council reform proposals

On Tuesday April 2nd 2013 Italy hosted Uniting for Consensus group (UfC) meeting, which was held at the Faculty of Social Sciences, and invited all distinguished UfC delegations represented in 2013 Session of the General Assembly UN. Meeting was attended by the delegations of Spain, Turkey, South Korea, Argentina and Italy, only delegation of Mexico was absent.

This meeting was an excellent opportunity for the delegations to discuss extremely important topic on the agenda of GA session– Security Council for the 21st Century. Since Uniting for Consensus presents one of the most powerful groups in the reform process and has already invested much time and effort to formulate different possible solutions to this issue in the past, it wants to offer a lasting solution, which will solve the problem of Security Council’s lack of legitimacy, once again.

All representatives of UfC member states agreed that this upcoming GA session on a Security Council for the 21st Century offers an opportunity to finally make Security Council more representative, accountable, efficient and flexible. They also expressed their willingness to formulate new common proposal of the Security Council reform, and therefore show flexibility of UfC group again.

Discussion was therefore focused on the problems of current structure of Security Council, previous proposals of Security Council reform made by UfC group (2005 and 2009), and formulation of new common proposal of Security Council reform. UfC group decided that new proposal will encompass solutions to different Security Council’s problems, such as categories of membership, the question of the right to veto, working methods, regional representation and size of enlargement, with the main focus on the reform of Security Council’s membership.

UfC group believes that the Security Council reform should not serve the interests of few states, but should serve the long-term interest of the United Nations. New proposal will be therefore based on the principle of fair and equal opportunities and will offer greater representation for small and medium-sized countries and greater representation for currently disadvantaged regions. UfC member states are convinced that an approach where the Security Council would become an even more exclusive club would not solve the Security Council’s lack of legitimacy. With the aim to solve this problem, UfC group is going to seek support for its view that no new permanent members should be added again.

It is very positive that UfC and other interest groups are building coalitions and forging proposals before the start of negotiations. However, they should not forget that they will need to collect two-thirds majority when it comes to potential voting. They need to convince, not only states that share similar position and interests in international society, but also states with different ideas about new structure of Security Council.

In addition to this, it is important to have some recognition and support from current P5 countries which posses the power to influence decisions of other countries. Knowing this, it seems that UfC is ignoring the statement of the current permanent members, when it comes to debating the question of right to the veto. However, it is too early to make any predictions before the actual proposals are being discussed. Until then we hope that majority of states have the similar idea about what representative and efficient Security Council means.

Luka Kavčič

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Disclaimer: This information is fictive and serves for the purposes of the UN simulation only.