NEW YORK CITY: Pakistan has warned that attempts by the aspirants of permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to railroad efforts to reform the 15-member body would kill the consensus-based process to make it more effective, representative and accountable.
Today, in the second IGN meeting, I strongly reiterated Pakistan’s principled position on UNSC reforms. Pakistan is opposed to expansion in the permanent category along with veto. More permanent members will compound the Council’s inequality & disfunctionality. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/VM0upSI014
— Pakistan Permanent Representative to UN (@PakistanPR_UN) February 16, 2021
“More permanent members will compound the Council’s inequality and dysfunctionality,” Islamabad’s permanent representative in UN Ambassador Munir Akram said while reaffirming the government’s strong opposition to including new permanent members.
“Pakistan is opposed to expansion in the permanent category along with veto,” he said.
“Permanent membership contradicts the fundamental precepts of sovereign equality, democracy, representativeness and accountability,” the envoy said, adding: “It is only through an expansion in the non-permanent category that the ideal of a comprehensive reform can be met.”
With that in view, Ambassador Akram said that the Italy and Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group, which opposes adding any permanent members, has proposed 11 new elected members to the Council.
Full-scale negotiations to reform the Security Council began in the General Assembly in February 2009 on five key areas — the membership categories, the question of veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Security Council, and working methods of the council and its relationship with the General Assembly.
Despite a general agreement on enlarging the Council, as part of the UN reform process, member states remain sharply divided over the details.
The G-4 have shown no flexibility in their push for expanding the Council by 10 seats, with six additional permanent and four non-permanent members.
On the other hand, the UfC group has proposed a new category of members — not permanent members — with a longer duration in terms and a possibility to get re-elected.
The UNSC is currently composed of five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members elected to serve for two years.
In his remarks, Ambassador Akram said, “If progress is to be made in the Security Council reform process, it is only by searching for areas of the agreement through painstaking discussions in the IGN and through sober consultations, mutual accommodation and innovative compromise.
“It cannot be railroaded by bullying and coercion,” he added.
