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Security Council Reform
No Seat for a Billion Muslims?
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By
Dr.
Farooq Hassan**
Expert – International Law
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April
28, 2005
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The
Security Council: World War II victors' club?
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From
1997 until today, an international debate about enlarging the
numerical strength of the Security Council has been in evidence.
Demands and proposals by diverse institutions have advocated that the
enlargement in both permanent and non-permanent categories be such
that the Council grows from 15 to somewhere around 22, or even 24. In
this context, an impetus of considerable dynamic was witnessed when
then-President Clinton, in his September 22, 1997 address to the
General Assembly, expressed strong "support for expanding the
Security Council to give more countries a voice in the most important
work of the UN." 1
But the US President was well aware that before embracing any workable
proposal for enlarging the Security Council, many tough questions
would have to be answered—which he carefully avoided.
Enlarging
the Security Council is very much a practical desirability, but the
difficulty lies in a settlement of the necessary details. The Clinton
administration had originally suggested expanding the permanent
membership to include only Germany and Japan. While this would extend
permanent status to two currently highly industrialized former
“enemy states,” it would not resolve issues of wider
representation. Accordingly, the attention of the concerned countries
and institutions turned to the notion of a Council composed of
permanent members representing all continents and regions; that is,
not just from North America, Europe, and Asia (China), as it presently
stands.
Models
and Alternatives
Religious
Representation?
"Muslim"
Candidates
The
Year of Reform?
The
present year is very important to Security Council reform from the
perspective of this article, since it is hoped by many that some
progress will be made by the time the General Assembly session is
convened in the fall of 2005. The raison d’etre of the UN
system was grounded in the World War II defeat of the Axis powers and
the consolidation of the victors' power. Paradoxical as it may now
seem, it is primarily through the efforts of Germany and Japan, World
War II's defeated "enemy states," that the major thrust for
reforming the UN Charter has emerged.
The
designation of 2005 as a critical year for Security Council reform was
determined by the Secretary-General when, in a major report to the UN
in early 2005, he called for genuine reform to break the hegemony of
the victors of World War II in the Security Council, calling for a
decision before September for its enlargement. 2
An examination of Annan's report began in April 2005, in New York. It
was seen as an endorsement of the efforts of Germany, Japan, Brazil,
and India for a vote this summer on adding six new permanent seats to
the Council (seats that would include the four countries lobbying for
the expansion). In his report to the UN General Assembly unveiling his
latest reform proposals, Mr. Annan urged a swift decision by the
191-member General Assembly: "Member states should agree to take
a decision on this important issue before the summit in September
2005." Mr. Annan hopes to obtain support for his comprehensive
reform package, which aims to overhaul collective security in the
aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, at the summit in New York.
With
the end of the Cold War, the Security Council became more
active, attracting more criticism. |
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Despite
the fact that the Secretary-General's report was couched in diplomatic
language and did not explicitly mention the German-led campaign for a
vote on Security Council enlargement in the summer, Mr. Annan made it
abundantly clear he would support a vote if no consensus could be
reached. "It would be very preferable for member states to take
this vital decision by consensus, but if they are unable to reach
consensus this must not become an excuse for postponing action,"
he said.
Under
the UN Charter the Security Council is imbued with the primary
responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. At
the time of the creation of the UN in 1945, the Security Council had
eleven members, including the P5, out of a total membership of 51
states. After a subsequent amendment to the Charter in 1963, the
number of non-permanent members was increased from six to ten.
While
the 80s remained an inconvenient time for discussing reform, the
atmosphere changed dramatically in the nineties. With the end of the
Cold War, the Security Council became more active, attracting more
attention, and consequently, more criticism. This was witnessed in the
controversy that lingers until today about the invasion of Iraq, two
years after US President Bush stated that the war had ended. 3
Even then, the United States had to resort to the Council for approval
of various measures taken after the fall of Saddam.
Impetus
for Change
Today,
it seems to be universally acknowledged that some kind of reform is
both necessary and urgent; consensus on what shape this reform should
take is, however, still far from visible. Times have changed; yet the
size and composition of the UN Security Council remains unchanged.
With UN membership now at 191 countries, the political dynamics of
international affairs have grown so complex that an increase in
Council size is essentially a substantive requirement of the current
era.
Many
in the rest of the world view their exclusion from the Council, whose
discussions have vitally affected their particular regions and areas,
as unfair. Africa, Latin America, and the Muslim world, for
example, have no permanent voice on the Council. But since the UN took
up the matter of Security Council reform in April 2005, there is a
sense that now may not be the best time to push for reform, given the
situation in Iraq. Yet, it is precisely because of the Iraq war that
the issue of reform has picked up so much steam, since many countries,
politically important or otherwise, realized that they have no voice
in fundamental problems of war and international peace, given the
present structure of the UN.
Even
if the timing were better though, analysts predict that significant
difficulties will continue to hamper reform efforts. Currently, the
resolutions of the 15-member Council carry the weight of international
law, or something akin to it. But the resolutions pass only if they
manage to avoid a veto from any of the permanent five (P5), and gather
at least nine votes in favor. The Council's ten non-permanent seats
are presently allotted regionally; three to Africa, two each to Asia,
Latin America, and Western Europe, and one to Eastern Europe. The
non-permanent members rotate through the Council, each elected to a
two-year term.
The
Security Council's debates on Iraq in 2003 indicate that a genuine
process of reform, one that seeks to fulfill the aspirations of the
people of the world, is urgently needed. This was made obvious by the
visible cleavages between the views of the various governments, their
populations, and the countries not represented in the Council. The
global clamor against the war was simply ignored by Council members
while making their addresses.4
Except for France and Germany, none of the members dared to
espouse a vehemently anti-war position in the Council.
It
is universally acknowledged that Security Council reform is
both necessary and urgent. |
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At
the doctrinal level, the addresses of many countries in these debates
was quite astonishing. First, the purely legal questions as to whether
the Council could sanction such a war, having been primarily created
to prevent hostilities or threats thereof, was never really examined.
Even if the Council could do so, the “threat” to world or regional
peace posed by Iraq’s alleged non-compliance with Resolution 1441
was never analyzed. Furthermore, the call for war was taking place
despite worldwide demonstrations against war.5
In the UK, where the largest anti-war rally ever witnessed in Western
history occurred in February 2003, the British government chose to
proceed with seeking authorization for war. Similarly, Pakistan, where
the anti-war mood of its 150 million plus population was made apparent
by demonstrations, failed to adopt a stand that represented Pakistani
public opinion.
Apart
from the Iraqi situation, there is the reality of the political quid
pro quo that takes place among Security Council members. It was so
visible that it made the mission entrusted to the Security Council by
the Charter lose meaning. It showed the extent to which transnational
politics are governed by real politik, by exigencies and
political affiliations, rather than by adherence to principles of law
or the institutional requirements of the Charter.
It
is the hope of many who support such “reforms’ that the increase
in Council membership may result in future debates being more balanced
and more inclined towards justice and legality. But with international
politics still being influenced by a largely unipolar power structure,
it is a moot point as to whether increased membership would make any
difference to a powerful country determined to have its way in the
Council.
Models
and Alternatives
At
the Open Ended Working Group on Council Reform (OEWG) in May 2004, set
up in 1999, India called for an end to the "unrepresentative and
anachronistic" character of the Security Council, and urged that
reform efforts be given the “highest priority.” Simply put, India
advocated that new Council membership should represent India's
rightful democratic credentials in the politics of the contemporary
international community. In other words, it was India’s
contention that diversity was necessary to ensure the Council would be
representative.
This
came close on the heels of the Kofi Annan's call for expanding the
size of the 15-member Council. The issue of making the Council more
democratic is thus an important criterion being assessed for the
envisaged enhancement.
 |
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Annan
wants to overhaul collective security
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Several
models and alternatives have been debated; some propose expansion only
in the non-permanent category; others propose the creation of a third
category of members that would have longer terms but no veto power.
The most popular models envisage increases in both the permanent and
non-permanent categories. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these
plans is the so-called Razali Proposal. Under this proposal,
there would be an addition of five permanent seats for Germany, Japan,
an African state, an Asian state, and a Latin American state, and four
non-permanent seats (Asian, Latin American, African, and Eastern
European), increasing total membership to 24. While enjoying the
widest support, this proposal has not yet mustered the sufficient
number of votes required for a UN Charter amendment, i.e. two-thirds
of UN members, including all five permanent Security Council members.
There
are only two articles of the UN Charter that establish criteria for
non-permanent membership of the Security Council. First, under Article
18, the election of such members by the General Assembly is classified
as an “important question” requiring a mandatory two-thirds vote.
Then, under Article 23, two criteria for non-permanent membership are
mentioned:
(1)
The contribution of members to the maintenance of international peace
and security and to the other purposes of the UN; and,
(2)
The election of new non-permanent members should be on the basis of
equitable geographical distribution.
Since
the first of these requirements is entirely subjective and dependent
on the political evaluations of the powers that be, it can be safely
stated that the only workable criteria is thus the second one,
relating to geographical distribution. Usually, the states of the
regions from which the new non-permanent member is to be elected
decide (de facto if not de jure) the issue among
themselves before seeking the formal approval of the General Assembly. 6
The
various proposals now being discussed raise a host of questions as to
which state or states from each region should be given permanent
status. For South America, should the representative be
Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the largest and most populous nation in
the region and one of the top-ten contributors to the UN’s regular
budget, or say, Spanish-speaking Argentina? For Africa, should the
representative be Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, multiracial
South Africa, or Egypt, one of the region's oldest UN member states
and a Muslim-majority country? For non-Chinese Asia, should the
representative be India, a democracy of over one billion people, or
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state? Should the
current memberships of Great Britain and France be merged into a
single European Union seat? Or should a single seat be given to the 60
plus countries described as “Muslim,” with a focus on
nuclear-capable Pakistan?
Religious
Representation?
One
peculiar aspect of the issue of enlargement needs immediate focus.
Non-permanent seats in the Council have been given, since the
Council's inception, to “geographical regions.” But at the height
of the Cold War, a consensus arose that, in the European context, a
seat would be allotted to a communist bloc state. 7
Thus, although there is no historical basis whatsoever to suggest that
Council seats were ever given on a religious basis, in practice, some
accommodation was made, during elections to non-permanent seats, for political
ideologies considered at variance with the rest, with a view to
making the Council's final composition more equitable.8
Therefore, a question can be raised with some justification: If
different but important political ideologies can be accommodated in
the allocation of Council seats, why can't there be representation
based on religious grounds?
In
view of the above facts and the established conventions of UN practice
in electing non-permanent members of the Security Council, I will now
examine this idea from the perspectives of Muslim countries. Can and
should a case be made for having a permanent seat allocated for Muslim
countries?
Important
political ideologies can be accommodated in Council seats;
can't there be representation based on religious grounds? |
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Numerically,
the Organization of the Islamic Conference's (OIC) 57 members and
three observer countries make it the largest single inter-governmental
institution in the world. In addition, there are states like India,
which has the largest Muslim population after Indonesia, the most
populous Muslim-majority country. But quite apart from the numerical
strength of the Muslim states, most recent important political events
with very far-reaching consequences and international repercussions
have emanated from or are intimately connected with Muslim-majority
areas. In the last quarter of a century, the most serious
international crises which often led to actual war were associated
with Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and the Middle East. Lesser
hostilities were connected with Muslim populations in Indonesia,
Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and Lebanon.
However,
it was the Council's debates on Iraq, with the perennial Palestinian
question in the background, that led to widespread disenchantment with
the real politik that is the status quo of the UN system. As a result,
the call for a permanent seat for a Muslim state in the Security
Council has gained nominal momentum.
It
is manifestly clear that most of the “problem areas” where the UN
Security Council is most likely to intervene have Muslim-majority
populations. The genesis of most of these problems is connected with
the rights of the peoples of occupied territories, or with the
nationalist aspirations of unprivileged sections of the societies in
which these Muslim populations live. Yet, proposals for expanding
Security Council membership have not, until now, proffered a seat to a
Muslim state. While there is considerable talk of “equitable” or
“representative” distribution, it is primarily connected with and
directed by considerations of geography.
In
this context, an OIC Foreign Ministers meeting was held in New York on
September 28th, 2004, at the same time the 59th annual session of the
General Assembly was convening. Acutely aware that there was no real
international interest in supporting a bid for a permanent Muslim seat
on the Council, the Final Communiqué of the Annual Coordination
Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of OIC Member States said, in
paragraph 56:
“The
Meeting reiterated the OIC’s stance in support of the principle of
the United Nations reform, including the expansion of the Security
Council’s membership, in accordance with the United Nations General
Assembly resolutions, and taking into consideration the
principles of sovereign equality of all States and the need to ensure
equitable geographical distribution. It also called for a
comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all its aspects so as
to make it more democratic, representative, transparent and
accountable. The Meeting declared that any reform proposal, which
neglects the adequate representation of the Islamic Ummah in any
category of members in an expanded Security Council will not be
acceptable to the Islamic countries.”
For
obvious reasons, this “Islamic stand” has not been forcefully
disseminated or followed up on. In September-October 2004, the first
major open debate on the issue of Security Council expansion took
place in the General Assembly. Regrettably, this point of view was not
adequately propounded by Muslim countries. In the more recent April
2005 debates, articulations on this OIC ministerial declaration were
conspicuously absent.
"Muslim"
Candidates
Taking
the above into account, it appears that there are only two Muslim
countries that would enjoy any “outside” support for a membership
bid. First, Egypt, which has been mentioned primarily on account of
its historical association with the UN, its importance as an Arab
country, and its location in Africa; and second, Indonesia, the most
populous Muslim country, whose name has been mentioned by Australia,
its southern neighbor. However, based on their addresses in the most
recent session of the General Assembly, it is less than clear if these
two states are interested in pressing for their candidacy on the basis
of their Muslim populations. While Indonesia certainly qualifies on
that basis, it is also one of the largest countries in its geographic
region, and Jakarta, it seems, has not considered it wise to emphasize
the religious angle per se.
Pakistan
is the only contender which has lobbied, albeit halfheartedly, for
membership based on its Islamic heritage; however, this has been done
mostly through indirect semantics and innuendos. Unsurprisingly, it
has received little overt help, even from the Muslim states at the UN.
Although
Egypt is not a considered a direct contender for a permanent Council
seat, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit made a strenuous
appeal for the addition of African seats in the Security
Council. He pointedly referred to the 1997 Harare Declaration, which
demanded that African countries should be granted two permanent and
three non-permanent Security Council seats. As such, because of the
core role it plays in African and Arab affairs as well as in the
Muslim world, Egypt is arguably qualified to undertake the
responsibility of permanent Security Council membership.
The
Syrian ambassador said the Council’s lack of objectivity and its
double standards might well undermine its role and the international
legitimacy to which it aspired, stressing that reform of the Council
and the expansion of its membership should be part of a comprehensive,
integrated project that takes geographical representation and
equitable distribution into account. While ambassadors of Muslim
states such as Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Kazakhstan,
and Bahrain spoke out in these debates, they merely addressed
generalities about the need for the Council to be more
“representative” and “democratic,” and made no reference to
the need for a permanent seat for a Muslim country.
In
the latest Pakistani statement to the UN, on April 7th, 2005, Pakistan
lamented that the Secretary-General’s report on reform of the
Charter "does not fully address the most important and
existential threat to peace arising from foreign occupation, denial of
self-determination, territorial disputes, interventionist policies and
the excessive accumulation of increasingly lethal conventional and non
conventional armaments." But significantly, it added: "Nor
is the troubled relationship between Islam and the West
addressed in the report." The reference to Islam is critical to
this analysis, as it indirectly raises the issue of a Muslim seat in
the Council.
While
Africa and Latin America have made a persuasive case for permanent
representation in the new enlarged Council, the 60 plus Muslim states,
representing over a billion people, have not. It critical at this
important phase of contemporary world history that Muslim countries
undertake efforts to that end. If they do not, then they are
effectively settling for the continuation of their secondary role in
UN affairs for at least another half a century.
**Dr.
Farooq Hassan is
a specialist in international law, with doctorates from Oxford,
Columbia, and Harvard. He is a barrister at law (UK), an attorney at
law (US), and a senior advocate Supreme Court (QC) of Pakistan. He is
also Professor and Visiting Fellow of the Law School Human Rights
Program & Center for International Affairs at Harvard University,
and the President of the American Institute of South Asian Strategic
Studies, Boston. He was also Pakistan's ambassador to the UN for five
years.
[1]
This author attended that session of the UN
General Assembly and was present during the address.
[2]
The General Assembly is currently considering,
in different clusters, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report on UN
reform, entitled "In Larger Freedom: Towards development,
security and human rights for all."
[3]
On April 1st, 2003, President Bush formally announced after militarily
occupying Iraq that the “mission had been accomplished."
[4]
The Council Members, during the period January
to March 2003, in apparent support of the US-UK draft Resolution in
the Security Council pursuant to Resolution 1441, but without
actually agreeing to vote affirmatively with the sponsors were:
Algeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Chile, Brazil, Romania, Angola, and
Benin. Only Spain was known to have intended to vote affirmatively;
the Russian Federation and China were ambivalent in their
articulations, but were likely to vote for the US-UK draft had it come
to such a stage.
[5]
Many countries asked to speak in these debates
(from February 19th, 2003 to March 2003) while not being formally in
the Council.
[6]
However, there are occasions when such
arrangements were not followed, leading to repeated ballots, in which
the President of the Assembly can play a critical role. Such abnormal
cases are, for instance, in 1955, when 36 ballots were need to elect
Yugoslavia over the Philippines, and 1951, when 19 votes were taken to
elect Greece over Byelorussia. However, in recent times the “larger
groups” in the relevant region decide such candidacy as they deem
appropriate.
[7]
See International Organizations, D.C.
Blisdell, p. 52-53, 1966 Edition. According to the “gentlemen’s
agreement” of 1946 in London, the P5 agreed to allow the division of
the world into five regions, which would provide the eventual election
of non-permanent members in the Council. Under this “agreed
formula” there were two seats for Latin America, one each for the
British Commonwealth, the Middle East, Western Europe, and one for
Eastern Europe. The Soviets maintained that this agreement was for
“indefinite duration,” but the US said it was only for that year.
See further, Repertory of UN Practice, Vol. II, NY, 1955, p. 8.
[8]
It is clear, however, that this “formula”
was not technically observed over Soviet objections. However, in
practice a tendency of “bloc voting in the General Assembly”
became more marked with the admission of many new states as members
from Asia and Africa. See generally, The General Assembly of the
UN: A Study of Procedure and Practice, NY Frederic Praeger Inc.
1964 Chapter ii.
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