How to reform the UN security council and why?

Résumé du document

The Security Council is usually considered as the most important organ of the UNO. Primarily "responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security" , the Security Council has huge responsibilities and thus needs legitimacy to fulfill its mission. There has been a great demand for a reform of the UN, and one of the greatest challenges is the reform of the Security Council, which would be "a decisive test of its capacity for comprehensive reform of any kind." However, no reform has been successfully implemented yet and it is therefore necessary to analyze both the reasons why this organ should be reformed and what the various solutions might be.Why should we reform the UN Security Council? Since its foundation in San Francisco in June 1945, the UN Security Council has only been reformed once: that was in 1965, when the General Assembly adopted an amendment extending the size of the Council from 11 members (5 permanent and 6 non-permanent) to 15 (with 4 new non-permanent members). The two other important changes were the replacement of Taiwan by the Popular Republic of China in 1971 and of the dissolved USSR by the Russian Federation in 1991.

Extraits

[...] In 1965, there were 115 for 15 members of the Council. The size hasn't evolved since then but there are now 192 members of the UN. Some scholars have considered that since the extension of 1965, size and composition of the SC should keep pace, at least to some extent, with the increasing total membership of the organization.”[4] This could justify an increase of the size of the Council to better reflect the diversity of states within the UN, since the decolonization and the end of the Cold war resulted in the creation of dozens of new states that progressively joined the organization. [...]

[...] The fact that the P5 countries remain divided concerning the issue symbolizes their unwillingness to reform the SC. The US supports only the candidature of Japan, the UK supports India and Germany, France supports Brazil, Germany, and India, China focuses on the representation of African countries and Russia remains discrete. This support to various and competing countries might hide a desire to make the reform impossible as it will never be possible to give everyone a permanent seat Bibliography Books Bourantonis, Dimitris, The History and Politics of UN Security Council Reform, New York: Routledge [This books provides with a complete presentation of the history of the UNSC and the most important issues but doesn't unfortunately analyze the evolutions since 2000.] Franda, Marcus, The United Nations in the twenty-first century, Management and Reform Processes in a Troubled organization, Lanham: Rowland and Littlefield very complete and up-to-date analysis of the reform process, that might even go to far in the details and the various elements of reform but presenting all the key issues.] Gareis, Sven Bernhard, and Johannes Varwick, The United Nations an introduction, New York: Palgrave [The authors dedicated only a few but very dense pages dealing with the reform of the UNSC, giving elements for further research about one particular country's position or more details about a proposition of reform.] Websites Germany's Federal Foreign Office, (url: http://www.auswaertiges- amt.de/diplo/fr/ Aussenpolitik/VereinteNationen/DUndVN/SRdtPosition.html), Reform of the United Nations Security Council the German position. [...]

[...] how to reform the un security council and why? The Security Council is usually considered as the most important organ of the UNO. Primarily “responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security”[1], the Security Council has huge responsibilities and thus needs legitimacy to fulfill its mission. There has been a great demand for a reform of the UN, and one of the greatest challenges is the reform of the Security Council, which would be decisive test of its capacity for comprehensive reform of any kind.”[2] However, no reform has been successfully implemented yet and it is therefore necessary to analyze both the reasons why this organ should be reformed and what the various solutions might be Why should we reform the UN Security Council? [...]

[...] But some projects intend to create a Council with more than 25 members, which the US opposed. Moreover, a second important issue is the veto. The P5 will never accept to give up this tool that was given to the “winners” of WW2 in retribution of their influence and their efforts (financial and military) to preserve international peace. They would probably not even accept to share this privilege and that has been understood by Germany[10] (even if Japan still asks for it and if scholars consider that creating a third member category might be dangerous). [...]

[...] Razali proposed that the “Council should be expanded by a further five permanent and four non-permanent members.”[6] The plan intended to give a permanent seat (without veto power) to Japan and Germany (the 2 industrialized states) and to 3 countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America (for instance, Nigeria, India and Brazil), but also one permanent seat to one African, one Asia, one Latin American and one East European countries. A second major contribution was the report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility by the Secretary General's High Level Panel in 2004. The recommendations included two options concerning a reform of the UNSC meeting 4 principles: 1. “increase the involvement in decision-making of those who contribute most to the UN financially, militarily and diplomatically” 2. “bring into the decision-making process countries more representative of the broader membership” 3. [...]