UNITED NATIONS – Pakistan, which firmly opposes additional permanentmembers on the U.N. Security Council, has called for equitablerepresentation on the 15-member body by adding more elected seats to it.
Speaking in the long-running Intergovernmental Negotiations on SecurityCouncil reform, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, said thatequitable “representation” has been the primary impulse behind all SecurityCouncil reform efforts, and its importance cannot be over-stated.
“In 1945, the Security Council represented 20% of the membership of the UN;today, it represents 8% of the membership”, she asserted, also pointing outthat nearly a third of the membership has never served on the Council.
Full-scale negotiations to restructure the Security Council began in theGeneral Assembly in February 2009 on five key areas “categories ofmembership, the question of veto, regional representation, size of anenlarged Council, and working methods of the body and its relationship withthe 193-member Assembly.
Despite a general agreement on enlarging the Council, as part of the UNreform process, member states remain sharply divided over the details.
Known as the “Group of Four” — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan — haveshown no flexibility in their campaign for expanding the Security Councilby 10 seats, with 6 additional permanent and four non-permanent members.On the other hand, Italy/Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group saythat additional permanent members will not make the Security Council moreeffective.As a compromise, UfC has proposed a new category of members — not permanentmembers — with longer duration in terms and a possibility to get re-electedonce.
Arguing that representativeness and accountability were two sides of thesame coin, Ambassador Lodhi said, the greater the accountability, thebetter the representativeness and added that one cannot co-exist withoutthe other.
“Applied in the context of the Security Council, it is evident that theseconditions cannot be met by an expansion in the permanent category”, thePakistani envoy stressed. “This is acknowledged by UN charter itself,wherein permanent members are identified by name without creating anypretense of regional or equitable distribution”, she argued.
Criticizing the Group of Four position, Ambassador Lodhi said, “Withoutprejudice to the Common African Position for representation on behalf of anentire region, we are at a loss to understand how proposals that seek topromote the national aspirations of some member states, can enhance therepresentative nature of the Security Council, when the region in question,has neither bestowed that privilege on them, nor does it enjoy the right tohold them to account”.
On the other hand, she said, it is the non-permanent category where theelements of equitable representation are embedded; elections andgeographical distribution in article 23(1) of the UN Charter, and aspecific term with rotation in article 23(2). Separate these two articlesand the concept of representation goes out of the window, she said.In conclusion, Ambassador Lodhi expressed Pakistan’s commitment toconstructive and meaningful engagement in carrying forward this process.
But, she said, the process itself has to be a membership-driven one. Sheurged the chair to ensure that the process remains on a consensual andinclusive path to achieve the progress everyone wants to see. – APP