UNSC REFORMS (Syllabus: GS Paper 2 - IR)

Context: BRICS leaders called for comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council, so that it can adequately respond to prevailing global challenges and support the three legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including Brazil, India and South Africa.

United Nations Security Council (UNSC)

• The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, and approving any changes to the UN Charter.
• The UNSC is the only UN body with the authority to issue binding resolutions on member states.
• India has been advocating for the need to expand the P5 for some time now. Over the years, other countries have also been pushing for India to be included in a reformed, expanded UN Security Council.
• The argument of many critics of the United Nations Security Council is that it isn’t effective and that it needs to be fundamentally reformed. The loudest calls for reform come from those who believe that the inclusion of a host of new permanent members is the answer to the effectiveness deficit. 
• Others argue that it is folly to suggest that the addition of new permanent members would amount to meaningful reform.
• Since the end of the cold war, these reform debates, contorted by politics, have circled endlessly without any prospect of conclusion. With the creation of the ‘Open-ended Working Group on the Question of the Equitable Representation on and Increase in the Membership of the Security Council and Other Matters Related to the Security Council’ (the UN committee with the longest title), the debate became formalized and plans for reform subsequently proliferated.