UN Security Council Needs Serious Reforms

The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres has said the world body’s security council needs a serious reform of its composition and working methods as the organisation often finds itself at an impasse.

Guterres who stated this at the opening session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, also said the council has been unable to act on the most important issues of peace and security of the time.

This is as analysts said discussions on the real reform of the main body of the international community are still rather cautious.

“Everyone understands that a decisive restructuring of the United Nations can lead to the complete destruction of this organisation and the loss of even a minimal opportunity for a broad discussion of global and international problems.

“Most countries of the world think that if the United States and Europe face the prospect of losing their unique capabilities within the framework of the United Nations, they will simply go to the destruction of this institution.

“The main international organisation is experiencing a crisis provoked by the dominance of Western interests in its work. UN reform is necessary, if only because multipolarity has brought many new “players” to key positions who are not currently represented in the Security Council as permanent members.

“Washington’s initiative to expand the Security Council has a double purpose, since everyone understands that the United States “

‘has played a dominant role in many ways and to some extent is trying to continue to play a dominant role.’

“The UN Security Council no longer performs its functions, as three of its five permanent members are representatives of the West. They are not interested in changing the status quo in the world” they noted.

The analysts said one of Washington’s fears is also that the expansion of the number of permanent members of the Security Council, if it happens, will certainly take place at the expense of non-Western countries, adding that these circumstances, in turn, will deprive the “pro-Western” model of UN governance of its support.

According to them, the destructive position of the United States and its allies around the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts is of particular concern, hence it again vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution blocking the demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire during the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.

“This was the third US veto of the draft resolution since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, 2023.

However, the work of both individual structures and the UN as a whole raises many questions today. The imposition of unilateral sanctions by the United States and its allies against specific countries is gaining momentum. In the 1990s, the issue of imposing such sanctions could only be resolved with the approval of the UN Security Council. In practice, all this remains only on paper.

“The West has long broken the authority of the UN with gross and regular violations of the Charter of the organization. According to the UN, one third of all countries in the world are under individual sanctions. Among them is Russia, which, unlike many, has managed to use sanctions to successfully develop its own capacities. It is obvious that the situation with the application of sanctions, the main customer of which is the United States and Western countries, has long been out of control of the UN.

“According to Russian experts, the Security Council is not an ideal example of equitable geographical representation of all regions of the world, and it is necessary to think about expanding the organization – primarily by including representatives of Africa, Latin America and Asia in its composition,” the analysts added.