By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
Previously Chief Speech-Writer of the UN Secretary-General, Director in the UN Political Department, and Seventh Chancellor of the University of Guyana
The United Nations Security Council is the most authoritative organ in the world and it is important to have a contemporary understanding of the Council at a time that is fraught with risks and challenges to international, as well as regional, peace and security. Reflection on the future of the Security Council is a matter of the greatest urgency.
The Security Council, under the UN Charter, is vested with authority to call upon States to pursue the peaceful settlement of their disputes (Chapter 6 of the Charter), or to issue mandatory orders to them to act for the preservation of the peace, backed up by sanctions – economic or military – if need be (Chapter 7 of the Charter).
In our times, the Security Council has furthermore been faced with the challenges of dealing with what may be termed thematic global risks to international security, such as climate change, pandemics, rising oceans, expanding deserts and massive displacement of populations – inside or outside their territories,.
The Security Council has had a mixed record in dealing with all three categories of issues. What it is able to do – or not do – is influenced by its composition, the cooperation of the parties – or lack thereof- and a historic preference of the Great Powers to deal with actual situations rather than systemic challenges.
Of its fifteen members, five are permanent and may exercise the veto on the adoption of substantive decisions, that is to say decisions that are not procedural. In other words, if, say, fourteen members are in favour of a certain course of action, and a permanent member votes against, then the decision will not be carried.
This structural choice was made at the founding of the United Nations and is based on the reasoning – not unreasonable – that in order for the United Nations to be effective in a course of action, it must have the backing of its most powerful members. Today’s five permanent members do include the three most powerful countries in the world militarily: the USA, China, and Russia. And the other two, France and the UK are nuclear-armed powers with large armed forces.
There has been, for a while, an ongoing debate that the Council’s membership is unrepresentative, and should be expanded, and that other countries should join the permanent members. The inescapable fact is that a change in the composition of the Security Council cannot be achieved without the agreement, express or tacit, of the five permanent members. And so, for the foreseeable future, one will have to deal with the Council in its existing composition – while negotiations continue to arrive at some agreement on the future composition of the Council.
When it comes to the peaceful settlement of disputes, the Security Council, in the post-cold war era, has been fairly active in discussing situations and making recommendations to the parties, under Chapter 6 of the Charter, to settle their disputes peacefully. But the Security Council has had to deal with three phenomena that have made its task rather difficult. First, most of the numerous ongoing conflicts in the world have been internal conflicts, within States. Put simply, rival factions battle it out with arms that are easy to come by.
Second, terrorism has been a major problem: domestic, regional, and international terrorism. After the attacks on the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Security Council acted vigorously in leading the international charge against terrorism. The hard fact, however, is that terrorism remains a serious problem world-wide.
Third, there is, underway, a realignment of power among the Great Powers. While Russia is said to have still the largest number of nuclear weapons, China and the USA also have large stockpiles of these weapons, and on top, have massive armies, navies, air forces and sophisticated weapons. Stephen Roach, in his 2022 book, Accidental Conflict, addresses the increasing risk that China and the USA could accidentally slide into war, with Taiwan being the flashpoint most mentioned. Roach recommends the establishment of a standing China-USA Secretariat to help them control the risks of accidental conflict.
So, the role of the Security Council in promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes has been a difficult one. The Council’s role in taking mandatory action under Chapter 7 of the Charter to bring recalcitrant parties to book has also been quite difficult. One saw this in the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Because Russia wields the veto, the Council has hardly been able to play a role here. And there are other examples of this kind of problem. China has been protective of, for example, North Korea. Russia and China have been protective of Venezuela and Nicaragua. And the USA has been protective of Israel.
The picture that thus presents itself is one in which the most authoritative organ of the United Nations, the Security Council, seeks to navigate its way with great difficulties in discharging three of its key responsibilities: addressing global threats to international security, acting for the peaceful settlement of disputes, and taking mandatory action to call offending States to book.
There is a fourth responsibility in respect of which the Council’s record has similarly been mixed, namely the prevention of conflicts. The Security Council has a decent record of cooperating with regional organizations such as the African Union, ASEAN, and ECOWAS and in encouraging them in their preventive activities. The Security Council also encourages UN regional centres for preventive diplomacy in Africa and in Central Asia in their activities.
But the Security Council has been reluctant to allow the UN Secretariat to engage with it in what is known as ‘horizon-scanning’, namely the identification of situations of risk, or global developments that might present risks to international peace and security. At base here lies the problem of the political sensitivities of Member States, particularly the permanent members.
The United Nations Secretary-General has the competence, under Article 99 of the Charter of the United Nations, to bring to the attention of the Security Council situations, or issues he thinks could imperil international peace and security but, historically, UN Secretaries-General have rarely exercised this competence
In the face of the growing number of thematic global threats to international security, such as climate change, rising oceans, expanding deserts, and mass movements of population in search of safety and security, the Secretary-General of the United Nations could, in the future, activate his competence under Article 99 of the Charter and present to the Security Council for its consideration well-researched and reasoned briefing papers, in effect ‘risk analyses’ on issues requiring the considered attention of the most authoritative organ of the United Nations, the Security Council.
Such global security briefings by the Secretary-General could help the Security Council overcome its difficulties in addressing these thematic global threats to international security. Invigorating the Security Council in the face of deep political fissures among its membership will require imaginative thinking among present and aspiring members of the Security Council, and on the part of the UN Secretary-General.
