The United Nations Security Council meets on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, at the UN headquarters in New York on March 25, 2024.The dysfunctionality of the Council has seen the permanent members acting unilaterally on matters of peace and security and often in a manner that undermines global stability, the writer says. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP
By Sizo Nkala
In a major announcement recently, the United States, through its Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that it was ready to support two permanent African seats at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and one non-permanent seat for small island states.
This comes two years after the US President Joe Biden told the UN General Assembly in September 2022 that the US supports the increasing of the number of permanent and non-permanent representatives on the UNSC.
However, the US said it would not support that the two permanent African seats be granted veto powers like the five original permanent members namely the US, China, France, Britain, and Russia. The reason for this, according to Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, is that the veto has rendered the Security Council dysfunctional as any permanent member can block Council resolutions they do not agree with.
The UNSC currently consists of five permanent members with veto powers and 15 non-permanent members representative of the diverse regions of the world. The latter group does not possess veto powers.
The veto power has been widely condemned of rendering the Council paralysed and ineffective as the permanent members hardly ever agree on anything and frequently exercise their veto power leaving the Council unable to act on important global security matters.
The UNSC has not been able to act and prevent wars (Russia-Ukraine war), de-escalate conflicts (Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia, Sudan, and the DRC) and stop genocides (Rwanda in 1994 and Kosovo in 1999) and other crimes against humanity committed in countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and former Yugoslavia.
The dysfunctionality of the Council has seen the permanent members acting unilaterally on matters of peace and security and often in a manner that undermines global stability.
The US proposal has attracted the ire of many observers in Africa, and rightly so. Africa and other developing regions have long demanded permanent seats in the UNSC, which is the UN’s most powerful organ responsible for making decisions on global peace and security.
It has been argued that the UNSC, which was established in 1945 after the end of the Second World War, is not representative or reflective of the current global order thus bringing its legitimacy and credibility into question.
Developing regions like Asia, Africa, and Latin America remain under-represented yet they constitute the majority of the world population and often bear the brunt of global security problems. However, the US proposal is at odds with the 2005 Common African Position on the Reform of the United Nations, also known as the ‘Ezulwini Consensus’ adopted by the African Union (AU) in Swaziland.
The Ezulwini Consensus called for the full representation of Africa in the UNSC. The document states that full representations means that Africa is entitled to two or more permanent seats in the UNSC with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership including the right to veto.
This would also entail increasing Africa’s non-permanent seats from the current three to five. Moreover, the consensus states that even though Africa is opposed in principle to the veto, it should be made available to all permanent members of the UNSC as long as it exists.
As such, the US position as stated by Thomas-Greenfield is something Africa would not be prepared to accept, if the Ezulwini Consensus is anything to go by. The position, which ensures that the new permanent members will have less power and influence than the original permanent members, reeks of rank hypocrisy and is testament to the US lack of commitment to the reform of the UNSC.
The US has long paid lip service to the issue of reforming the UNSC without taking any concrete action. There is no point for Africa to accept permanent seats that are not equal to other permanent seats. These seats would be devoid of any agenda-setting capability leaving their occupants having to lobby those countries with veto powers to support their positions.
It is only fair, as suggested in the Ezulwini Consensus, that veto powers be granted to all permanent members, new and old, if the veto prerogative is retained. In the same manner, the veto power should be suspended for all the permanent members if it is abolished.
Hence, Washington’s proposal is a non-starter in effecting real reforms in the UNSC as it does not entail true and full representation of the long excluded and marginalised regions. Nonetheless, all hope is not lost as there is a still an opportunity to have robust discussions on the reform of the UNSC at the upcoming UN Summit of the Future (22-24 September).
The reform of the Council will be one of the main agenda items. The UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism recommended that the Summit of the Future announces a conference to review the UN Charter with a focus on the reform of the Council.
It remains to be seen what the outcome of the Summit will be. African countries and other developing regions still have the chance to push for a more substantive reform of the UNSC.
* Dr Sizo Nkala, A Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media