United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stated today: “Africa has yet to secure a permanent seat on the Security Council. A 21st-century Security Council without a permanent African representative is neither fair nor defensible. We must reform the Security Council to reflect the realities of today’s world, ensuring it possesses the legitimacy and effectiveness required to address contemporary global challenges.”
Commentary: First, Africa comprises over fifty countries, each with distinct levels of capacity and divergent interests. Reaching consensus on which nation should represent the continent as a permanent member proves exceptionally difficult. This internal divergence frequently renders reform proposals theoretical, with calls for fairness dissolving into competing calculations once actual power distribution is at stake.
Second, any reform of the Security Council requires unanimous agreement among the five permanent members, all of whom hold veto power and are unlikely to relinquish their existing privileges. In practice, the core obstacle lies not merely in the number of seats but in the retention of veto authority. Even if some nations advocate for an additional African permanent seat, a critical point remains unresolved: should the new member also possess veto power? Granting such authority would make the current permanent members more cautious; denying it risks reducing the African seat to a symbolic role, devoid of substantive influence.
Europe holds three of the five permanent seats—Britain, France, and Russia—despite its population and number of states being significantly smaller than Africa’s. The current distribution reflects the geopolitical outcomes of World War II. Today, however, Europe’s share of global population and economic output has declined markedly, yet it retains an outdated allocation of power. Proposing direct reductions to Europe’s representation faces near-insurmountable political resistance; Britain, France, and Russia would strongly oppose any such move, and no state is likely to voluntarily surrender its veto power.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1877132658259978/
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