Mint Explainer: How is India pushing to reform the UN Security Council?
United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Among other things, India has called for the expansion of the permanent membership of the body, which currently includes only five countries. The reform of international institutions also featured prominently in deliberations at the G20.
Mint takes a closer look at the issue. The United Nations was established after the end of World War II to ensure global peace and stability. The UNSC was created as a group of countries that would take “primary responsibility" for ensuring global peace.
Today, the UNSC has 15 members: five permanent and 10 non-permanent. The five permanent nations are the US, the UK, France, China and Russia. They are also known as the Permanent 5 or P5.
By virtue of their national power and their ability to veto policy measures, they exercise outsize power over the functioning of the UN. However, countries like India have increasingly argued that the UNSC is in dire need of reform if the body is to stay relevant. The first criticism of the UNSC is that it was constituted over seven decades ago and last expanded in 1965, almost 60 years ago.
The concentration of power in the hands of the permanent members, largely from the Western world, has been another point of concern. No Latin American, African or West Asian powers are represented as permanent members. In 2013 Saudi Arabia refused to serve as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in the absence of institutional reform.
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