UN Council needs urgent reform

UN Council needs urgent reform

By Imron Cotan

JAKARTA (JP): The United Nations General Assembly is
undergoing its 52nd session in New York and as has been
previously predicted, the reform of some of its institutions,
especially that of the Security Council, is indeed high on the
agenda.

Notwithstanding the fact that it has recently resumed its
pivotal role in maintaining international peace and security --
as stipulated in Chapter V, Article 24, of the UN Charter -- many
attempts have been made to reform the Security Council.

There have been at least two underlining reasons upon which
the international community's call for the reform of this
powerful organ of the United Nations is based.

First, it is now being considered as nonrepresentative since
the members of the United Nations have drastically increased to
185 states.

Second, and of no less importance, the Security Council
created undemocratic rules to cater to the cold-war era, allowing
a selected few of its members holding permanent seats -- namely
the United States, Russia (formerly the U.S.S.R.), the United
Kingdom, France and China -- to exercise individual veto powers
over any decisions the Security Council might take.

The need to reform the Security Council has furthermore gained
ground, especially among developing countries, due to an
increasingly common perception that the Security Council seems to
be more of a political tool for the most powerful countries to
multilaterally legalize goals relating to their national
interests.

The stern and continuous actions taken against Iraq are indeed
a striking example and seem to have been blown out of proportion.
Ironically, in the meantime, the Security Council is
incomprehensibly speechless regarding tragedies of similar
magnitude in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Israel and Zaire to
name but a few cases which it has long been confronted with.

Unfortunately, the attempts to reform the Security Council
have so far failed to achieve the looked-for results. It is
against this backdrop that the president of the 51st session of
the UN General Assembly, Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia has
taken the initiative to try to reform the Security Council.

His proposals contain the following basic ideas:

First, the permanent members should be increased to ten
countries compared to the current five.

Second, two out those five additional seats should be given to
Germany and Japan, as they represent the strongest economic
powerhouses in our recent history, while the remaining three
should be openly contested among the members of the regional
groupings of Asia, Africa and Latin America (including the
Caribbean), each having one seat respectively.

According to the devised plan, candidates from developing
countries could only be elected if they manage to secure the vote
of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly. The
initiative furthermore highlighted that all five of the
additional permanent members should enjoy no veto rights.

Third, four countries should be elected to function as
additional non-permanent members of the Security Council
representing respectively, African states, Asian states, Eastern
European states and Latin American and Caribbean states.

Fourth, the veto rights of the current permanent members
should be subject to scrutiny in the future for eventual
abolishment -- for the maintenance of such power is being
perceived as legitimizing undemocratic values, originating from
the cold-war era, which all developing nations object to.

The proposals put forward by Razali seem to be very
attractive. They, however, contain elements which demand a closer
look. Of cardinal importance is the selection process of the
permanent members originating from the developing world.

Unlike Germany and Japan, the three representatives of the
developing countries are obligated to freely compete in the
General Assembly.

Hence, these countries would not actually represent the
aspirations of the region concerned, while at the same time
opening the possibility of non-regional countries in the General
Assembly to determine the representative of a particular region
which they do not belong to.

The best way to circumvent this delicate situation is to
select the regional representatives based on a consensus. This,
of course, is no easy task either.

The political realities in the regions of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America and the Caribbean certainly pose formidable hurdles
to consensus-building efforts which would determine the
representative country best-suited for each region.

In Asia, India would be questioned by Pakistan and Indonesia.
In Africa, Egypt would be challenged by Nigeria or South Africa
and vice-versa. While in Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil
would be antagonized by either Argentina or Mexico and the other
way around.

Another innovative solution has to be invented. The proposal
put forward by Indonesia's Foreign Minister Ali Alatas before the
52nd session of the General Assembly recently is indeed
praiseworthy. Alatas proposed that, instead of one, Asia should
be given two additional permanent seats in the Security Council.

If this would be applied as well to the two remaining regions,
it would greatly help the regions pave the way for achieving a
consensus decision.

Without a modification such as Alatas' suggestion, the
proposals offered by Razali would not address the
nonrepresentative nature of the Security Council. As one might
recall in its early inception, the Security Council consisted of
11 countries with the United Nations having 51 members (21.5
percent of the UN membership was therefore also part of the
Security Council).

Should Razali's formulas be acceptable, the Security Council
would merely have 24 members with the United Nations having 185
members. That means the membership of the Security Council would
only constitute 15 percent of the total United Nations membership
-- far less than it was in its early establishment.

While this idea is indeed totally unacceptable, it may lead as
well to the question of validity or invalidity of the decisions
taken in this would-be nonrepresentative body.

What is most striking is that, for the case of Germany and
Japan, the election of these two countries would be based on
economic parameters -- disregarding the fact that they were the
predominant Axis Powers during World War II, inflicting
horrendous and unmeasurable damages to mankind and its
civilization.

Furthermore, these economic criteria are doomed to be short-
lived, for in the not-so-distant future many countries will also
be able to claim that they are eligible as well for permanent
seats on the Security Council based on their tremendous progress
in economic fields and their huge contribution to the United
Nations budget.

These might, for example, include the Republic of Korea and
Singapore, while politically and demographically they do not
adequately represent any constituencies.

In an attempt to thwart this totally unacceptable formula, the
potential candidates from Asia, especially Indonesia, have to
campaign openly and assertively.

Establishing beforehand a set of criteria for suitable
candidates is indeed the right thing to do. As one might recall,
Alatas has on many occasions stated that those candidates should
be chosen not only by geography but also from their political,
economic and demographic weight and their track record of
contributing to world peace (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 2, 1997).

One additional important factor that should be included in
this set of criteria is that the candidates have to represent the
existing powerhouses of the real world.

Indeed, the current Security Council does not have any
representative from the Moslem world. Albeit Indonesia does not
claim itself as an Islamic state, it is still a member of the
Organization of Islamic Conferences. No single country can
contest that Indonesia is a suitable candidate to serve as a
representative of this important and yet developing constituency
of the world.

Not until after all countries unanimously agree to specific
criteria can Indonesia entertain the idea of reforming the
Security Council. If not, we should stand in the way of reforms
not supported by all members, for Indonesia is too big a country
to fall to any pressures. We should stand firm for a right and
just course for the world and for Indonesia.

The writer is a former United Nations Disarmament Fellow and
an expert on international peace and security affairs, residing
in Jakarta.