India rejects proposal to expand only non-permanent UNSC membership, calls it ‘bordering on failure’

India rejected proposals to expand only the non-permanent category of the UN Security Council, calling such reform inadequate. At UN negotiations, India urged expansion of permanent membership, adoption of a negotiating text, and meaningful changes to the Council’s power structure

United Nations: India has dismissed as “bordering on failure” suggestions to expand only the non-permanent category of the Security Council membership as the nations of the world organisation grapple with reforming its highest decision-making body.

India’s Permanent Representative P Harish said on Monday that reform without expanding the permanent membership “would fundamentally not change the decision-making power-structure of the P5”, the five permanent members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.

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“Groups and member states have waited this long for real and meaningful reform”, and “UNSC reform would be grossly inadequate, bordering on failure, if expansion is limited only to the non-permanent category”, he said at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) for Council reform.

Uniting for Consensus (UfC), a 12-member group led by Italy and includes Pakistan, has been opposing the addition of permanent members and has exploited procedural manoeuvres to put spokes in the wheels of the reform process. Their main tactic has been to prevent the adoption of a negotiating text on which to base the discussion for reform that would enable the process to progress. They assert that there should be consensus before there can be negotiating text, which runs counter to the idea of negotiation leading to a consensus.

“’A nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ approach must not become a tool to block progress”, Harish said.

Without naming the UfC, he said, “Status-quoists have tried to use this argument in their favour and thereby, entrench the existing inequities in the Security Council”. “IGN cannot be fundamentally different from other UN processes, wherein negotiations are held on the basis of a text”, he said. “Therefore, we urge the co-Chairs to take the lead on formulating a text, with clearly-defined milestones and timelines”.

Harish said that India’s consistent advocacy for the expansion of the permanent membership “has been to bring in a greater sense of balance and equity in the Security Council” and change the decision-making monopoly of the P5.

Emphasising the need to reform the structure of the permanent membership of the UN that appears to be fossilised in the post-World War II world, Harish said that while the General Assembly embodies the truly democratic principles at the UN, the “Council is fundamentally different by its very design”. “The principle of sovereign equality of states would not be applicable in its entirety, unlike the UNGA, due to such foundational DNA enshrined in the Charter”, he explained.

Critiquing the so-called “Elements Paper” prepared by the co-chairs of the IGN, which is an attempt to present the views at the negotiations in a consolidated manner, Harish said it “proposes further discussion and clarification on the concept of ‘permanency’”. But, he pointed out, “the UN Charter is very clear on this question, and there is no room for ambiguity. “Article 23 clearly categorises the UNSC members into two: permanent and non-permanent. Therefore, the definition of a permanent seat needs no further elaboration”, he said.