India, other G-4 countries rue slow pace of UNSC reforms
WASHINGTON : India, Japan, Germany and Brazil have expressed concern at the slow pace of reforms of the United Nations, specially the Security Council, the 15-member body led by the five permanent members, any one of whom can veto the combined desire of the other 192 member countries.
The four Security Council aspirants noted with “concern that next year would mark 40 years” since the question of expanding the Security Council and making changes in affairs related to the body was written into the agenda of the 1979 General Assembly, and said in a joint statement that “substantial progress had not yet been achieved”.
The statement was issued after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the four countries in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Tuesday.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj hosted her G-4 counterparts, Brazil’s Aloysio Nunes Ferreira, Germany’s Heiko Maas and Japan’s Taro Kono, for the meeting.
Reforms of the Security Council include expanding its permanent membership from the current five with veto powers — the US, the UK, France, Russia and China — and the non-permanent membership from the current 10 who have no veto and rotate out at the end of their two-year terms.
The G-4 countries are aspirants for permanent membership in its current form or alternative models that been under consideration, one of which has been permanent membership with delayed addition of veto power. But there are other models, and a consensus of any kind is nowhere in sight.
Some of the heads of G-4 governments voiced their concern and frustration on the floor of the General Assembly in their speeches on Tuesday. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the significance of the UN in the 21st century is ”being starkly questioned” due to lack of progress in Security Council reforms. But Japan will not give up and will keep pushing, he said.
Calling for reforms, Brazil’s President Michel Temer said the Security Council “in its current configuration reflects a world that no longer exists”.
The Security Council came in for criticism from other countries as well, such as Iran and Turkey, for other reasons.
India and the G-4 members have watched the process move at a pace that’s so slow it has seemed “imperceptible at times”. They have decided to “revitalise” the process and, according to the joint statement, directed officials to “consider the way forward to advance the reform”.
But there isn’t much they can do to speed up the process in the current atmosphere of “great power rivalry” replacing “great power collaboration”, a diplomat from one of the G-4 member countries said on background to explain the process.
There is a lack of unanimity at the top. US President Donald Trump trumpeted his “America First” vision in his speech, a theme he first laid out in 2017, and clearly said he was opposed to globalism: “We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.”
Close allies took issue with that.