by VIJAY PRASHAD
At its 15th summit in August, the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group adopted the Johannesburg II Declaration, which, amongst other issues, raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council.
To make the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) “more democratic, representative, effective, and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries,” BRICS urged the expansion of the council’s membership to include countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The declaration specifically noted that three countries — Brazil, India and South Africa — should be included if the UNSC’s permanent members are expanded.
For at least the past 20 years, these three countries (all founding BRICS members) have sought entry into the UNSC as permanent members with veto power.
Over the decades, their aspirations have been thwarted, spurring them on first to create the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) group in 2003 and then the BRICS group in 2009.
The composition of the security council and the question of which states have veto power as permanent members have been central issues for the U.N. since its founding.
In 1944, at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the main Allied powers (Britain, China, the U.N.ion of Soviet Socialist Republics and the U.N.ited States) gathered to discuss how to shape the U.N. and its main institutions. These states — also known as the “Big Four” — decided that they would have permanent seats in the UNSC and, after much deliberation, agreed that they would have the power to exercise a veto over UNSC decisions.
Though the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not keen to bring France into their ranks because the French government had colluded with the Nazis from 1940 to 1944, the United States insisted on France joining the group, which would in turn become known as the “Big Five.”
The U.N. Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, established in Article 23 that the council would consist of these five countries as permanent members (also known as the “P5), along with six other non-permanent members who would be elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.
In July 2005, a group of countries known as the G4 (Brazil, Germany, Japan and India) brought a resolution forward at the U.N. General Assembly that raised the issue of reforming the UNSC.
Brazil’s ambassador to the U.N., Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, told the assembly that “accumulated experience acquired since the founding of the United Nations demonstrated that the realities of power of 1945 had long been superseded. The security structure then established was now glaringly outdated’.
The 2005 resolution was not brought to a vote and has since languished, despite the passing of a resolution in 2009 on the “question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council and related matters.” Nonetheless, these efforts opened a long-term dialogue that continues to this day.
The G4 countries have not been able gather sufficient support for their proposal because the current permanent members of the UNSC (Britain, China, Russia, the U.S. and France) cannot agree on who amongst their allies should be granted these seats.
Even in 2005, a divide opened amongst the P5 countries, with the United States and its G7 allies (Britain and France) operating as one bloc against both China and Russia.
The U.S. has been willing to expand the permanent seats on the council, but only if it means bringing in more of its close allies (Germany and Japan), which would allow the UNSC to effectively remain dominated by five of the seven members of the G7. This, of course, would not be acceptable to either China or Russia.
Today, as the question of comprehensive U.N. reform is gathering momentum, the U.S. government is once again trying to co-opt the issue, calling for the expansion of the UNSC in order to counter Chinese and Russian influence.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s high officials have openly said that they favour bringing in their allies to tilt the balance of debate and discussion in the UNSC.
This attitude towards U.N. reform does not address the fundamental questions raised by the Global South about international democracy and equitable geographical representation, particularly the call to add a permanent member from Africa and from Latin America.
The G4 proposed that the UNSC be enlarged to 25 members from 15, with the addition of six permanent and four non-permanent members.
Most of the members who spoke at the debate pointed to the fact that no countries from Africa or Latin America had permanent seats in the UNSC, which remains true today. To remedy this would itself be a substantial act of equity for the world.
To make this change, the U.N. Charter required approval from two-thirds of the General Assembly members and ratification by their legislatures — a process that has only happened once before, in 1965, when the council was enlarged to 15 members from 11.
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