Kuwait calls for radical reform of Security Council
Kuwait’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Tariq Al-Bannai called for radical reforms in the United Nations Security Council. This came in Bannai’s speech during the meeting of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament on Tuesday. Bannai said: “I come from Kuwait. Kuwait was invaded in 1990; it took a multilateral approach, and it took the Security Council exercising all its prerogatives, from diplomacy to sanctions to authorization of the use of force to compensation and border demarcation and many, many other issues that were part of the process of freeing my country from occupation.
“So we have seen it work. We have seen it perform at the best possible level. Therefore, it can work, but it does require unity amongst the permanent members, for sure, because if that is not there, nothing really that requires Chapter 7 processes can work if there are divergent or opposing views.”
The Kuwaiti ambassador noted that the Future Summit organized by the UN in December would be an opportunity to discuss all possibilities for reforming the Council of Representatives and the way its mechanisms work in order to achieve the desired goals and create effectiveness and feasibility. He also touched on specific points, such as veto power, regional representation, the relationship between the Security Council and the General Assembly, working methods and the future size of the Council.
“We hope that this year’s discussion further enhances the convergences between member states, and that we can somehow be able to put those convergences in a package that allows member states at the highest level, the level of heads of state and government, to commit to reinvigorating not only this process, but also the ideas and the purposes and the principles of the charter itself, which the Security Council is an important aspect of,” Bannai said.