At a lunch seminar arranged by the International Peace Academy (IPA), former Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations Kishore Mahbubani stressed that the United Nations had reached a critical moment when a “grand bargain” needs to be finally crafted to pull together an agreement on UN reform.
At the IPA forum, I had been asked to speak on a formula for Security Council reform, which I had been working on since mid-1995 when Yale University launched a major report entitled “The United Nations in its Second Half-Century”. For about two years following the report’s release, it was my responsibility to organize a series of seminars on UN reform, several of which focused on the Security Council. I often spoke informally during coffee breaks with some of the ambassadors attending the workshops. The following ideas are a result of those conversations.
There have been some insurmountable obstacles which have prevented reform. UN Charter amendment requires the affirmative concurrence of the five permanent members of the Security Council, which in practicality means that none of the five will approve anything that removes them from the Council or takes away their veto-power privilege. So any reform will have to maintain the status quo of these members. Suggestions on adding new permanent seats for geographic regions have fallen short of support. Giving permanent seats, for example, to India to represent Asia, Brazil for Latin America, or South Africa for Africa, sounded good initially but was challenged by other countries in the region, claiming that these continental giants did not necessarily represent the interests of others in the region and in fact might solidify their local hegemony. Yet, Germany and Japan, which contribute a substantial portion to the UN budget, feel that since they are paying for much of the Council work, they should have more say in the decision-making process.
It is time to overcome these stumbling blocks, and I would like to propose some ideas for a revised structure of the Council that might overcome these obstacles and still meet the needs of an effective Security Council.
First is enlargement. To be more representative of the 191 UN Member States, the Council could be enlarged to 20 or 23 members, while maintaining the permanent members. A larger membership might make reaching a decision more cumbersome, but it does not have to be unanimous as it depends on the number of votes needed to pass a resolution. With the current 15-member Council, a positive vote of nine members is needed to approve a resolution (providing that no veto is cast), one more than a simple majority. With an enlarged Council of 20 members, a simple majority of 11 would mean that only two more positive votes would be required, making it only slightly more difficult to reach agreement. With a 23-member Council, a simple majority of 12 would make a decision again only somewhat more difficult to reach. One could argue that a simple majority may not be as persuasive as supra-majority support for a resolution, but 11 or 12 votes in favour is still greater than the current 9. Giving up the concept of a supra-majority might be necessary in order to provide greater efficiency.
Second is confronting the issue of permanent seats. Haggling over new permanent seats has stalemated any reform and should be abandoned. This proposal includes no new permanent seat and creates a new category of Council membership: a four-year renewable term. The four-year concept allows Council members some breathing space in campaigning for the seat and more time to participate in the decision-making process. Currently, the rotating non-permanent members serve a two-year term, which is not renewable. They must be off the Council for at least one year before they can stand for re-election. Many countries complain that it takes a full year—half the current term—to learn how the Council works and to garner leverage in the negotiations. The four-year renewable seat allows for certain members to be democratically elected and serve indefinitely if the entire membership continues to support their legitimacy. Other members would continue to fill the two-year slots, going off the Council to allow more members an opportunity to participate. The breakdown for a reformed Council would be the continuation of the five permanent seats, six four-year seats, and either nine or twelve two-year rotating seats, depending on whether the goal is a 20- or 23-member Council (see box). The formula can be adapted to fit the desired total number of seats Member States ultimately want to have.
Third, electing new members. These new four-year renewable seats could be filled by the current geographic groups or by a new process. Probably the most radical aspect of this proposal is the suggestion of electing the semi-permanent members through “economic groupings” of States. Currently, geographic groups select candidates from their regions, which are then proposed to the full General Assembly membership for the required two-thirds vote. While geographic distribution is important and has been a cornerstone of the United Nations since its founding, it does not necessarily represent the variety of economic and political interests of the countries in the region, and voting patterns by members are more likely to demonstrate economic alignments rather than geographic kinship. Additionally, a country which might have been considered for a regional seat would not realistically represent all the interests of an entire continent.
The United Nations may not be ready for this kind of economic approach, but it is worth discussing here to add some food for thought. Economic representation may be a more realistic factor in voting according to interests. In this proposal, the 186 non-permanent Council members would be distributed through a voluntary process among three groups: highly industrialized nations, middle economies in the developing world, and countries with smaller developing economies (see box). Countries would be free to assign themselves to whichever group they think best, and this could be changed every two years. This distribution would have a tendency to equal out, because countries would gravitate to the smallest group, hoping to increase their chances of election, but would be under some peer pressure to represent themselves realistically. Each of the three groups would elect two countries for the four-year renewable seat. In this way, the smallest countries would only compete with each other for these seats, making sure that they would always be represented on the Council. Campaigning for a seat has always been competitive and takes time and resources. Geographic considerations would still be taken into consideration, but informally. If Member States are not willing to form three economic groups, the formula could also be applied to the traditional regional group system. In this case, each of the six regional groups would elect one member to the four-year renewable seat and two to the normal two-year seat.
Fourth, a bargain for the permanent members. A condition for having the privilege of holding the four-year seat would be that these members would pay an additional surcharge for peacekeeping, as do the permanent members. This surcharge would be based on the ability to pay; poorer countries would still pay according to their ability but would be expected to support their decisions on the Council with national resources. Peacekeeping troops or other in-kind support might be considered in the calculations. Wealthier countries would pay more and would help to alleviate the burden carried by the United States, which is currently assessed about 26 per cent of all peacekeeping costs. Two of the four-year seats could be filled by Germany and Japan, which can afford to help out with the costs, but they could only hold these seats if they were able to successfully win election every four years. Any country elected to the four-year semi-permanent seat, be it Brazil, South Africa, India or others, would be accountable for their actions to the broad General Assembly membership, yet others could challenge them. Far from being a second-class seat, they would have the prestige of being elected, having true legitimacy and not just representing a legacy of the past. It appears as though the high-level committee on reform established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan is considering these ideas. This formula could be the “grand bargain” that Ambassador Mahbubani hoped might be reached.
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