India Warns Of ‘Anachronistic’ UNSC, Resounding Calls For Reforms Echo
By ARUL LOUIS
NEW YORK, NY (IANS) – Perpetuating a UN Security Council built on an “anachronistic mindset” will also mean the continuing loss of faith in the world organization, India has said as resounding calls from all sides for reform echoed in its chamber.
India’s Permanent Representative Ruchira Kamboj said on April 25 that to preserve the UN’s effectiveness and credibility there must be “widening the representation of this core institution, the Security Council to more developing countries”.
“If we continue to perpetuate the 1945 anachronistic mindset (of the post-World War II era), we will continue to lose the faith our people have in the UN,” she said.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and several countries stressed the need to reform the Council — and even the main antagonists, Russia, and the US, agreed on that.
Speaking at the meeting of the Council on “Effective Multilateralism”, Guterres said: “A majority now acknowledge that the Security Council itself would benefit from reforms that reflect today’s geopolitical reality.” That is also true of the international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, he said.
While countries from around the world backed him up with the demands for reform, the African nations were the most vociferous, warning that they were running out of patience.
Illustrating the moribund state of the UN when it comes to the Security Council, Kamboj took a dig at the UN Charter document which still gives permanent seats to the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” that no longer exists and the seat has been held by the Russian Federation since 1991, and to the “Republic of China”, the official name of Taiwan, although the seat was transferred to the People’s Republic of China in 1971.
“When we see the world’s largest democracy, along with entire continents of Africa and Latin America, being kept out of global decision-making, we rightly call for a major course correction,” she said. “Multilateral institutions rarely die,” Kamboj warned, “they simply fade into irrelevance”.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield in their caustic exchanges had one point of unanimity: The need to reform the Council.
Ven Parameswaran
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The Charter of the U.N. starts with the sentence: “WE, THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD……” not countries of the world. If so, the U.N. Security Council must represent the “PEOPLES OF THE WORLD”. India has the largest population and it should have been represented from the time the U.N. was founded in 1945.
There is no need for so called CHARTER REVISION because Russia was admitted without Charter revision when the USSR disintegrated. It was an anachronism that Taiwan (Formosa) island was seated as a permanent member of the Security Council to represent the large population of the mainland China for 30 years. This is called big power politics without any basis. But, now to prevent admitting India as a permanent member of the U.N.Security Council all kinds of objections are raised. The U.N. Security Council is the most undemocratic organ of the U.N.
April 28, 2023