Reforming the United Nations Security Council: an international peace and security perspective

Abstract

After the failure of League of Nations (called LoN afterwards), United Nations (UN) was established on 24 October 1945 with six principal organs - General Assembly (UNGA), Security Council (UNSC), Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice (ICJ) and Secretariat. With both triumphs and setbacks, the UNSC has been instrumental in global crises. Its structure, however, is progressively out of date and represents the allied dominated world order of 1945. The necessity to confront changing economic and military power dynamics is emphasized in today's UNSC reform discussions. One crucial issue is the permanent members' veto power, which can prevent collective action. The Council's history, changing global politics, the rise of new powers, structural flaws, applications for permanent membership, and restructuring difficulties must all be taken into account during reform talks. While filling in the inadequacies in the current system, any reform plan must improve peace and security. To guarantee that their voices and interests are heard in international decision making, poor nations like Nepal which is landlocked, small, and without significant political clout must participate more in the UNSC. Therefore, reform is both required and inevitable.

Within domain of different factors necessitating the reforming of the UNSC, best model of reformation and significance of reformation of UNSC in view of threats related to contemporary world, researcher has set out 3 main objectives which are: a) To identify major drawbacks in United Nations Security Council structure and its tools for the maintenance of international peace and security b) To provide appropriate models for the reformation of the United Nations Security Council's structure and its tools for the maintenance of effective international peace and security c) To explore the major impacts of reformation of UNSC structure and its tools for the maintenance of international peace and security. In order to achieve the set out objectives of the dissertation, it is divided into seven chapters which are Introduction, Review of the literatures, Research Methodology, structural and procedural aspects of UNSC, its functioning mechanism and need of reformation in UNSC with view of Security Perspective, Models for the reforming the United Nations Security Council with view of international peace and Security Perspective, Significance of reformation of UNSC in Contemporary world: Impact analysis and future discourse in broader spectrum of security with final part of the dissertation Summary, Major Findings and Conclusion. The dissertation has adopted qualitative approach of data collection and analysis using both primary and secondary data. The primary data are basically authentic UN publications and reports sampling method for primary data is non probability purposive sampling where respondents are divided into five categories in terms of diplomatic assignment in UN and other related environment, participation in UN peacekeeping in different capabilities at policy and field levels to obtain facts about different dimensions of reforming of UNSC with view of security perspectives. The dissertation has adopted descriptive and exploratory research design. The study mainly revolves on analyzing the gaps in existing framework of UNSC in terms of maintaining peace and security in the world, identifies the effective way of dealing with security threats to human lives and explores the significance of reforming in contemporary world focusing on adverse implications of existing structural and procedural set up of UNSC including veto power vested in P5 countries, effectiveness of UNPKO, implantation of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) duty, role of UNSC in maintaining Collective Security, identifications of possible models of reformation of UNSC, identifications of threats of the contemporary world and explores the significance of restructured UNSC for the betterment of future generations. The major findings of the dissertation are: a) there is need of structural change in current structure of UNSC and its tools used for global peace and security reviewing the change in world order since establishment of UN addressing sovereign equality, inclusion of rising global powers and balanced regional representation b) veto power vested in P5 members is detrimental when interest of P5 is linked with global security affairs and has deviated UNSC from carrying out its assigned responsibility as mandated in UN Charter c) there is need of amendment in UN Charter and there is a need to design the modality for implementation of collective security, R2P, peace enforcement. Peacekeeping operations d) ineffectiveness of peacekeeping missions has a detrimental effect in credibility of UN missions and they are main cause of rising anti UN sentiments. There is need to redefine peacekeeping and peace enforcement strategy and implementation roadmap addressing the gaps and lapses in peacekeeping/peace enforcement missions with effective UNSC resolutions e) reformation of UNSC is significant to address emerging global threats and security, to empower role of nations like Nepal other than P5 Countries in global peace and security related decisions, stop possible disintegration of UN and prevent rise of parallel international organization in replacement of UN.