CNN —
In a city known for private clubs vying for exclusivity, one gilded room in Manhattan reigns supreme: a club of powerful nations inside the United Nations Headquarters that has resisted the addition of new members for nearly 80 years.
The UN Security Council has been dominated by just five countries (the United States, China, Russia, France and Britain) since it was founded out of the ruins of World War II, when much of the world was still under colonial rule.
Currently, countries from around the world sit on the Security Council on a rotating basis as non-permanent members, but no country in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America or the Caribbean has the significant veto power that permanent members enjoy.
The veto allows the permanent members of the Security Council, known as the P5, to block any resolution – from peacekeeping missions to sanctions – in order to protect their national interests and foreign policy decisions.
However, a new movement is emerging to reform this colonial world order.
As world leaders prepare to return to UN Headquarters for this September's annual meeting, Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio reiterated Africa's long-standing call for Security Council reform, including granting two new permanent seats to African countries.
Africa accounts for almost 50 percent of the Security Council's daily work, and the majority of its resolutions are on peace and security. The continent is home to more than a quarter of the UN's member states and more than one billion people, yet remains “grossly underrepresented in this important UN body,” Bio said at a high-level meeting in August. Sierra Leone represents the UN Africa Group, which is made up of the continent's 54 countries.
A senior UN diplomat told CNN that Africa now holds great influence among the P5 countries, the final arbiters of any reforms, as Russia and the US compete for influence on the continent.
The Security Council is responsible for maintaining global peace and security and has the power to launch peacekeeping missions, authorize the use of force, impose sanctions and pass resolutions, many of which have been used to great effect despite high-profile impasses over Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli-Hamas war.
More than a dozen peer-reviewed studies have found that the vast majority of UN peacekeeping missions help reduce violence and reduce conflict in countries like Sierra Leone.
A years-long effort to reform the UN's most powerful body is gaining political momentum. U.S. President Joe Biden has made the case for permanent seats for African, Latin American and Caribbean countries in his 2022 UN address. Some diplomats are optimistic that a roadmap for Security Council reform will be agreed upon at the September general debate — a time when world leaders address the General Assembly and which the UN hopes will be used as a key opportunity to consider the future of the multilateral system.
The summit's draft document, “A Pact for the Future,” acknowledges the need to “prioritize redressing historical injustices against Africa” and Africa's special status in future negotiations.
“Now, for the first time, we are seeing movement,” said Alexander Marsick, the Austrian UN envoy who co-chairs the Security Council's intergovernmental group for negotiations. The group has been discussing reforms for 20 years, he told CNN.
While Council expansion is unlikely in September, “it may provide a path, a blueprint for how to complete the expansion in a reasonable timeframe,” Marusik said.On Tuesday, the General Assembly adopted an oral decision reaffirming its central role on Council reform and resolved to include the issue on the agenda for the next session.
Deep divisions among permanent members have fuelled frustration over the Security Council's inability to stop the world's biggest problems, from bloody conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine to nuclear threats and climate change.
“The US and Russia often use their veto to protect client states, like Israel or Syria, or to protect their own national interests, like Russia's veto over Ukraine,” Anjali Dayal, a UN expert and assistant professor of international politics at Fordham University, told CNN.
France and Britain have limited the use of the veto since 1989. But in the years since the Cold War, the United States, Russia and China have used the House of Representatives to “exonerate their allies and protect themselves from the consequences of unpopular foreign policy decisions,” she added.
Sierra Leone's foreign minister believes that greater impartiality in the Security Council would help break the deadlock and increase the council's credibility.
“There are many conflicts where the UN Security Council has actually issued a resolution but it is not immediately implemented, which shows the ineffectiveness of the Security Council at the moment,” Timothy Musa Kabbah told CNN from the UN mission's office in New York.
“In a more diverse, more globalised and interconnected world, the Council needs to be democratised and made geographically based and representative,” he added.
In addition to the five veto-holding seats, the Security Council has ten non-permanent members, three of which are allocated to Africa. Non-permanent members do not have veto power and are elected by the General Assembly on a regional basis for two-year terms.
Packed in the halls of the UN's iconic complex in midtown Manhattan, the permanent members and diplomats agree it's time to evolve. But rivalries and national interests among the UN's 193 member states have stymied efforts at change, as they fail to agree on who should join, how much to expand the permanent and non-permanent membership and what their powers on the council should be.
For example, Brazil and India want permanent seats on the Security Council, but that prospect would not be good for India's long-time rivals Pakistan and China, or in Brazil's case, Argentina and Mexico, one U.N. diplomat said.
The African Union is pushing for two permanent and two non-permanent seats on the Security Council, and there are at least five other UN member states that each have their own ideas about what reform should look like.
“This is a debate that's been going on for decades,” Daniel Forti, senior UN advocacy research analyst at the Crisis Group, told CNN. “Diplomats have not agreed on a formula for expanding the Security Council in a way that would require a two-thirds majority and that would get Washington, Moscow and Beijing all to agree to the same formula.”
“There is growing political momentum on this, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're any closer to achieving reforms,” he added.
For example, any attempt to strip the P5 of their veto power would be “pointless” and “not something the big three — the US, Russia and China — would ever agree to,” a senior UN diplomat told CNN.
But experts and diplomats say what might help is “lowercase reform,” pointing to a 2022 proposal put forward by Liechtenstein and adopted by the General Assembly. The proposal would require that any veto cases by the P5 be debated in the General Assembly. While this process cannot override a veto, it would increase the political cost of the P5 exercising unilateral power.
Expansion is possible, supporters argue, pointing out that the Security Council expanded from 10 to 15 countries in 1963. “So, on the one hand, maybe this is an opportunity,” said a senior U.N. diplomat. “I think the fact that people are talking about it means there's more momentum,” the diplomat added.
“But we are still a long way from seeing Security Council reform translated into real action.”
