India thinks the UN needs a restructured council that more accurately represents diversity
India emphasized that the majority of the international organization’s membership supports proposals for enlarging permanent seats in the influential body. India also emphasized the necessity for a reformed UN Security Council that better represents the geographical and developmental diversity of the UN today.
Leading the Global South in particular, India has been at the forefront of calls for UN reforms and for permanent membership in the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC).
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj, stated on Monday that her country is in favor of expanding the number of countries that can join the Security Council in both permanent and non-permanent capacities. She claimed that this is the only way to truly reform the Security Council and make it legitimate, representative, responsive, and effective.
“A reformed Security Council that better reflects the geographical and developmental diversity of the United Nations today” is what Kamboj emphasized while speaking at the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) meeting on Security Council Reform on Co-Chairs Elements Paper.
The Security Council should include the voices of emerging nations and underrepresented areas, such as Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia and the Pacific, at the horseshoe-shaped table. And in order to do this, membership growth in both categories for the council is crucially necessary,” the speaker said.
Ten non-permanent members and five permanent members—the US, UK, China, France, and Russia—make up the present UNSC. She pointed out that several members persisted in arguing that adding more permanent members to the UNSC would be “undemocratic.”
“We don’t see how something that the majority of members are obviously calling for could be undemocratic. She said, “We cannot remain captive to a minority in the IGN,” ostensibly alluding to nations like Pakistan, which has been against the UNSC’s permanent category enlargement.
