United Nations: India has highlighted the UN Security Council’s struggles to deliver peace and reconciliation in some of the “gravest” global conflicts, emphasising that authority derived from victory in the Second World War cannot compensate for a “deficit in legitimacy” of an unrepresentative UNSC today.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni on Thursday said an organisation that cannot renew its principal organ will find it ever harder to command authority in a world that has moved far beyond 1945.
“The cost is already visible. Eighty years on, the Organisation is struggling to deliver peace and reconciliation in some of the gravest conflicts before the Council,” Parvathaneni said addressing the ‘Question of Equitable representation on and increase in the membership of Security Council’ in the UN General Assembly here.
The Indian envoy said that the “authority derived from a victory eight decades ago cannot compensate for the deficit in legitimacy of an unrepresentative Security Council today.”
Parvathaneni highlighted the inadequacies and failures of a global organisation founded in the aftermath of the Second World War in addressing contemporary geopolitical challenges and conflicts.
“No war, especially one that took place over 80 years ago, should determine today’s state of the world,” he said, adding that the year 1945, when the UN was founded, cannot be held as the “sole reference point” for today’s United Nations.
He said today’s generation is far removed from the time when this organisation was formed.
“History can be a guide for what not to do. It cannot determine today’s choices for what needs to be done to face contemporary challenges. We cannot reasonably drive into the future by constantly looking at the rearview mirror,” he said.
He said that the credibility of the United Nations is “called into question” as conflicts multiply and the council struggles to respond.
“The citizens of today want to look ahead to what the future has in store for them and not at the distant past. They want equality, rights, fraternity of international cooperation in its truest sense. Let this organisation not send them back in a time machine to 1945 every time it discusses Peace and Security,” the Indian envoy said.
India also called out the deliberate suppression of sacrifices made by nations in the world wars while an organisation “crafted of the victors, for the victors and by the victors” did not include concerns of the victims.
“Sacrifices made in the World Wars have been countless, unrecognised and in some cases, deliberately suppressed,” he said, adding that around 2.5 million Indians took part in the war and around 90,000 of them died in military service.
Over four million were killed in the infamous Bengal famine due to colonial war policies. “An organisation crafted of the victors, for the victors and by the victors did not, obviously, care to include the concerns of the victims. The times have changed and the UN Security Council must also evolve – for the sake of its own relevance,” he said.
“Reform is not the settlement of old scores. It is an investment in a Council that all Member States can trust, and which would be stronger as a result,” he said.
India, which is vying for a non-permanent UNSC seat for the 2028-29 term, said that the Asia-Pacific Group accounting for more than 60 per cent of the world’s population has no choice but to be limited in its representation in the council to one permanent member and an elected membership varying between one and two members every year.
Africa and Latin America also remain under-represented. By contrast, Europe has two permanent members and three elected members.
“Nowhere else would the injustice of this gross under-representation have continued for so long,” he said
The 15-nation council has five permanent veto-wielding members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US while 10 members are elected to sit at the horseshoe high-table for two-year terms.
India has been calling for an expansion in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of UNSC membership, as Parvathaneni emphasised that a reform that expands only the non-permanent category leaves the central imbalance untouched and further entrenches the status quo.
Parvathaneni said the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) process cannot be fundamentally different from other UN processes, in which negotiations proceed on the basis of a text.
The IGN framework is an informal body of UN member states working within the United Nations General Assembly to reform the UNSC.
“For well over a decade and a half, we have exchanged prepared statements, session after session, and rolled the exercise over by consensus, with no text, no timeframe and no defined end goal.
“That is not negotiation; it is merely perpetuation of status quo. In any multilateral process, a text is the precondition to a negotiation and not its conclusion. We remain baffled by this inversion of the sequence of negotiation process,” he said.
“Convergences are not consensus, and the search for a lowest common denominator must not become an excuse for cosmetically tinkering with the existing structure while calling it reform,” he said.
Speaking on the veto process, he said India’s position is principled and unchanged. “As long as it exists, it must be held by all permanent members, new and old alike, as a matter of fairness. A two-tier permanent membership would only institutionalise inequality.”
On Working methods, he said India supports a more transparent, accountable and efficient Council, greater openness on listing decisions, and a stronger voice for troop- and police-contributing countries in shaping mandates.
