United Nations, Sep 11
Although the draft of the Pact for the Future to be adopted by world leaders could potentially take "the biggest step forward since the 1960s" for Security Council reforms, according to a senior official for the high-level summit, it risks being interpreted as splitting up the expansion of the Council by treating Africa "as a special case".
The draft's segment on Security Council reform is seen by those who formulated it in the negotiations process "as groundbreaking, as potentially the biggest step forward since the 1960s", Under Secretary-General Guy Ryder, who is the lead for the Summit of the Future, said on Wednesday.
The Pact, which aims to set the course for the UN's future as it turns 80 next year, is set to be adopted on September 22 at the opening of the summit, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend.
The 29-page draft with 60 action points covers a broad range of issues from artificial intelligence and outer space to reforming international financial institutions and reinvigorating peacekeeping.
The last time the Council was reformed was in 1965 when the non-permanent membership was increased to ten and the current reform efforts have languished for two decades.
The Pact draft promises to "redress the historical injustice against Africa as a priority and, while treating Africa as a special case, improve the representation of the underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups, such as Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean".
This leaves the door open to interpretation by some countries that the case of other countries like India, Japan, and Brazil for permanent seats on an expanded Council could be delinked from that of Africa, which has demanded two permanent seats and three more non-permanent seats.
The reform process has been held up by a small group of countries led by Italy and which includes Pakistan who are motivated by their opposition to permanent seats based on their individual rivalries to other countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
This group known as Uniting for Consensus (UfC) has been under intense pressure from the 55-member African group for not redressing the continent's exclusion from permanent Council membership.
Ryder said the draft was considered "groundbreaking", because of the commitment "to addressing historic injustice against Africa", and improving the representation of Asia-Pacific, Latin America, on the council and to enlarge it "to be more representative of current UN membership".
Also, he said: "There is a commitment to intensifying efforts to find an agreement on categories of membership, and the intention of developing a consolidated model of reform."
However, he added the caveat that the draft was still under negotiation with ten days to go before its adoption.
"The co-facilitators of negotiations, (Permanent Representatives Alexander Marschik and Tariq Albanai respectively of) Austria and Kuwait, recognised this as groundbreaking language, which appears at this point, to have the broad consensus, subject to confirmation of our member states," Ryder said.
The inclusion of the segment on Council reform into the pact draft was held up because of the strong differences among UN members and was added only late last month.
The draft says that the UN members "will intensify efforts for reform" through the Inter-Governmental Negotiation (IGN) process "building on the recent progress achieved in IGN".
Taking up the divisive issue of adding permanent members to the Council, the draft says the members would "intensify efforts to find an agreement on the question of the categories of membership, taking into account the discussions held in the IGN process".
It added a caveat that "the total number of members of an enlarged Council should ensure a balance between its representativeness and effectiveness".
Ryder conceded that the Pact draft does not attach deadlines to the reform process and the process "has been a very, very long process, and results have not yet been forthcoming, at least not in the nature that a number of our member states rightly wish".
But, he added: "There is a genuine sentiment (for reform), and the fact that the language apparently has a consensus of all parties is testimony to what I am saying, that what is being agreed, or hopefully will be agreed in the Pact for the Future, in ten days' time, does open new doors."
(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)