20 May 2009
Ambassador Zahir Tanin of Afghanistan, Chairman and facilitator of the intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform, released yesterday a paper summarizing the first round of negotiations as well as outlining the process during the coming second round. Member States will meet on Friday, 22 May 2009, to discuss the issue.
In September 2008, Member States decided to move the deadlocked discussions on Security Council reform from the Open-ended Working Group to intergovernmental negotiations in an informal plenary of the General Assembly, with the hope of infusing some new momentum into the discussions.
First Round Begins
In an effort to move the process, the newly appointed Chairman of the negotiations, Afghan Ambassador Zahir Tanin, presented a work plan in February 2009 in which Member States would focus their discussion on five key issues in a first round of talks; namely categories of membership, the veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Council and working methods, and the relationship between the General Assembly and the Security Council.
The aim was not to reach any definite solution to the issues above, but simply to give all Member States an opportunity to once again present their respective views and perspectives on how to reform the Council. Considering that countries have been mostly repeating themselves ad nausea since the early 1990s this exercise might seem fairly superfluous to most outsiders.
Nevertheless, as Member states delivered their statements, it appeared that several countries from the main factions, mainly the G4 and the Uniting for Consensus, were actively rethinking their positions and potentially inching closer to some common ground for compromises.
Among others, the UfC, which for many years has proposed regional rotating permanent seats, stepped forward with a compromise proposal involving longer-term seats, and Germany reportedly replied that they could consider longer-term seats instead of the permanent ones they had been advocating for (please see the Center's reports for a full coverage of the individual meetings).
The Chairman's Overview
Thus, with the first round coming to an end in late April 2009, Member States immediately looked to the Chairman for guidance on the next steps in the process.
On 19 May, the Chairman and Ambassador, Zahir Tanin, delivered his "overview." The paper is an attempt to sum up the meetings by describing the "main thrust of the productive exchanges of the first round," as he calls it. Ambassador Tanin furthermore writes that the overview, with its narrowed down options, could "serve as a point of departure and reference for the second round."
In this regard, the options that the Chairman has deduced from the many meetings and statements since February are noted as follows. On the size of a future reformed Council, he writes that options range from between the low-twenties to the mid-twenties members. In the categories of membership, the principal options are new permanent members, new non-permanent members, or a new category of longer-term non-permanent members. On regional representation, the options range from adding seats from the current regional groups to some new regional configuration. On functions and powers, he notes various possible improvements in working methods as well as a some form of a reform of the veto.
Way Forward
After laying out the principal options, the Chairman finishes his report by noting that "A nexus connecting both the five key issues to each other and, in the same vein, connecting a substantial mass of positions and proposals to each other, is the concept of review or challenge," and he continues, "The widely raised prospect of a reassessment of any arrangement by means of a review or challenge puts each and every component and the entirety of the reform in a different light." Therefore, the Chairman suggests, "this nexus constitutes a logical entry point into the second round," as it will allow "the membership to advance in more in-depth and more comprehensive negotiations, before [...] continuing during the third round to seek a solution that can garner the widest possible political acceptance by Member States."
The first meeting of the second round, in which Member States will voice their opinion on the overview as well as on the proposed way forward, has been scheduled for Friday 22 May 2009.
Unless attributed to a specific source, all expressions of opinion are those of the author. The Center for UN Reform Education does not endorse any particular reform proposals.