United Nations: Two groups advocating UN Security Council reforms on Thursday held, for the first time, a joint meeting to press for time-bound action to increase permanent and elected seats on the world body’s highest decision-making platform.
Ministers from the L.69, a group of over 30 countries from across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and C10, an influential group of African nations, were of the view that delaying Security Council reform “directly impacts the credibility and legitimacy” of the UN, according to a press release from India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar posted on X: “Encouraged by the first-ever Joint Ministerial Meeting of L-69 and C-10 groupings of nations”, which “called for text-based negotiations” in order to “achieve concrete outcomes in a fixed timeframe”.
The joint meeting highlights the urgent push mounted at the UN with Africa as the focus for reforms because of the historical injustice done to it by excluding it from a permanent member of the Council as a vestige of colonialism.
“The ministers reiterated the urgent need to make the Security Council more representative, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic, and accountable,” the MEA said.
They recognised that the Summit of the Future meeting of world leaders this week “provided an opportunity for renewed commitment to Security Council reform”, it said.
The Pact for the Future adopted at the Summit reiterated the global demand for reforms, especially to give the African continent its due representation on the Council. The ministers reaffirmed their support for the Common African Position, calling it “a manifestation of the principle of African Solutions for African Challenges”. The common position demands two permanent seats and two additional elected seats for Africa “as the only way to sufficiently redress the historical injustices” done to the continent.
The MEA release said: “They underscored that, for reform to be transformative, there must be greater representation of the Global South, especially for underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups, such as Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean, in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of membership”.
The meeting was chaired by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who heads the L.69.
