‘Voting at security council an unequal battle... urgent need to bring reforms’

NEW DELHI: It is well past midnight in New York, but his day is far from over.

“I will miss sleeping very very late and waking up very very early at least for some days,” says Syed Akbaruddin, India’s permanent representative to the United Nations as he recounts one of the most hectic diplomatic campaigns India has mounted in recent times. The mission? Getting Justice Dalveer Bhandari re-elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Excerpts. really a reflection of the UNGA’S mood. So we came to know that the prevailing mood in the general assembly was in our favour, and a huge majority wanted us to win. This is also a reflection of the changing reality in the world, something that the UN must take note of. Yes. Voting at the security council is an unequal battle. It is an unwritten rule that one permanent member should be supported by all the others. So, given that there are 15 UNSC members (five permanent and 10 non-permanent), Britain had to get just three votes from the 10 non-permanent members to reach the majority mark of eight. As for us, we needed eight out of ten votes (from non-permanent members) to ensure a majority in the security council. Justice Dalveer Bhandari can make it once we bagged two-thirds majority in the UNGA. The rest would happen the way they should. If planned changes are not brought into organisations such as the United Nations, events like this will do it. Changes don’t always happen by design. What happened in last ten days with regard to the ICJ elections testifies to that. Organisations as old as the UN should change with the times. That’s the lesson here.

Again, we should not forget that reforms can happen by chance, not always by design. It is obvious that there is an urgent need to reform the security council. It’s also about how everyone comes together to decide how to go about it.