Bharat wants expansion of UN Security Council in both the permanent and non-permanent categories: Ruchira Kamboj

Bharat is once again making efforts to get the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) expanded. It has said that it wants the membership in both categories, permanent and non-permanent, to go up. Presently, there are five permanent (often called the Big 5) and 10 non-permanent members at the UNSC. The expansion in numbers can help it get a permanent membership in the UNSC and a veto. If the number of non-permanent members goes up, some friendly countries can be accommodated.

“India is in favour of the expansion of UN Security Council membership in both the permanent and non-permanent categories. This is the only way to achieve genuine reform of the Security Council and make it legitimate, representative, responsive, and effective,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj has said.

She was addressing the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) meeting on the Security Council Reform on Co-Chairs Elements Paper late on Monday evening. She underlined the need for “a reformed Security Council’’ that better reflected the UN diversity. Her statement was also posted on the official X handle of India’s UN Permanent Representative later.

“A Security Council where the voices of developing countries and unrepresented regions, including Africa, Latin America, and the vast majority of Asia and the Pacific, also find their due place at the horseshoe table. And for this, an expansion of the Council in both categories of membership is absolutely essential,” she said.

The current UNSC comprises five permanent members (the US, the UK, China, France and Russia) and 10 non-permanent members. She expressed her indignation that some member states argued wrongly, as also falsely, that expansion in the Permanent category of the UNSC would be ‘undemocratic’. Out of 122 UN member countries who had spoken and made submissions in this regard, at least 113 had favoured the proposal, she pointed out.

““This means that more than 90 per cent of the written submissions in the document were in favour of expansion in both categories of membership specified in the Charter. We fail to understand how something that is clearly being called for by the majority of the membership would be ‘undemocratic’. We cannot continue to be hostage to a minority,” she said, in an apparent reference to countries like Pakistan, and China, which have opposed the expansion of permanent membership in the UNSC.

A proposal put forward for longer-term non-permanent seats, an idea mooted during the inception of the UN, was discarded due to its ineffectiveness. “This idea is only backed by a handful of member states,” she said.

Pakistan and China are members and also backers of a group called the Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group. This group of members has opposed the creation of new permanent members in the Security Council. The UfC model entails a Security Council with 26 seats, with an increase only in the non-permanent, elected members. This proposal is basically aimed at denying consensus on expanding permanent membership.

China clearly believes that if India gets permanent membership in the UNSC, it will gain a lot of diplomatic heft. It had stalled the designation of Jaish e Mohammad founder Masood Azhar as a global terrorist a number of times at the UN at the behest of Pakistan. However, if Bharat also gets permanent membership, such actions would become much more difficult.

Bharat has been at the forefront of leading the Global South (poorer, less developed, or developing countries), demanding reforms in the UN. It has been seeking the expansion of 15-member UNSC and a permanent seat that is in consonance with its rise in the global arena.