EAM Jaishankar urges united push for UNSC reform

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar urged countries impacted by the UN Security Council’s failures and slow reform process to unite for change. Chairing a meeting of the L.69 group with participation from Africa’s C-10, he stressed that delaying reforms perpetuates “historical injustice.”

United Nations: External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Wednesday called on countries affected by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)’s failures to address crises and its slow reform process to join forces to push for change.

He co-chaired a consultative meeting of the foreign ministers of L.69, a group of more than 30 Global South countries working for reform, at which the leader of the C-10 African group also participated.

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After the meeting, Jaishankar wrote on X, “As directly impacted stakeholders, L.69 and C.10 members join forces to keep pushing for UNSC reform”.

Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Swaray Rahman, coordinator of the C-10, a group of ten African nations advocating reforms, participated in the meeting.

Jaishankar wrote on X, stressing the need for reforms, “The Global South is at the receiving end of the unprecedented changes the world is undergoing, with the UN falling short of expectations”.

“Continuing to delay reform perpetuates historical injustice”, he said.

“The inability of the UN Security Council to address ongoing conflicts and threats to international peace & security only highlights the urgency of reform”, he added.

Earlier in the day, the Foreign Ministers of the G4 expressed “strong concern” over the failure of the UNSC reform negotiations to make headway after nearly two decades and said they would expand their outreach to other groups and forums.

In a joint statement after a meeting in New York on Wednesday, Ministers of the G4, the group made up of India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, said the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) framework for reforms “has been largely ineffective in forging any concrete outcomes towards real UNSC reform despite 18 years of activities”.

“They expressed strong concern at the lack of progress during the previous IGN session as well,” the statement said.

They “reiterated that discussions on reform need not be confined to the IGN and expressed their willingness to engage with the wider UN membership on this issue in other forums,” the statement added.

“The G4 will further collaborate and identify synergies with other reform-oriented groups with a view to developing a consolidated model that properly reflects the voice of a majority of Member States and commencing text-based negotiations as a high priority,” the Ministers said.

The Ministers “underscored that expansion of the UNSC in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of membership is central to such reform and that a majority of Member States supports this position”.