Why attempts to reform the UN Security Council keep failing … and what would actually work

Why attempts to reform the UN Security Council keep failing.

Key points

• Dr Raashid Wali Janjua Published August 25, 2026 Updated August 25, 2026 10: 00am.
• The UN General Assembly's decision, in its 62nd session, to commence intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) on equitable representation in the Security Council set this process in motion.
• The League of Nations' failure to prevent that war offers a preview of the institutional rigidity now visible in the UN itself.
• The lessons of the League's failure apply just as directly to the Security Council's structure and decision-making today.
• The UN system's principal instrument for preventing conflict, the Security Council, carries the same anomaly today.

Why attempts to reform the UN Security Council keep failing. And what would actually work.

Dr Raashid Wali Janjua Published August 25, 2026 Updated August 25, 2026 10: 00am. Join our Whatsapp Channel. Add Dawn as a trusted source.

Every few years, the world revisits an old promise: reforming the UN Security Council so it reflects today's realities rather than the victors of a war fought eight decades ago. Each round of discussions ends the same way – more speeches, no structural change. The reason lies not in the details of who gets a seat, but in what that seat can do once occupied.

In practice, the UN General Assembly's decision, in its 62nd session, to commence intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) on equitable representation in the Security Council set this process in motion. When the IGN was formally established to carry forward UNSC expansion and reform – an effort born of the decision-making paralysis inherent in the UN's own institutional design, it gained real traction in 2008. To understand the limits of that design, it helps to look back at the world that produced it. A council born of victors' justice.

Meanwhile, the UN system, established after 1945, reflected the realities of a Hobbesian world, where the victors' justice was codified in the shape of a UN Charter that offered the five major victors of World War II the power to keep their interests protected and fence in their rivalries with a veto.

Meanwhile, the League of Nations' failure to prevent that war offers a preview of the institutional rigidity now visible in the UN itself. The League's absence of key powers such as Germany, Russia, and the United States, combined with its consensus-based decision-making and lack of enforcement mechanisms, left it unable to act on the Soviet Union's attack on Manchuria, Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, or Germany's abrogation of the Versailles Treaty.

In practice, the lessons of the League's failure apply just as directly to the Security Council's structure and decision-making today. The veto mechanism was designed less to prevent conflict than to stop the P5 from confronting one another directly, reducing the odds of a great-power war. That arrangement has, so far, held off direct confrontation between global powers, but has done little to stop regional and proxy wars, some of which those same powers have actively sustained or promoted.

Though the present UN Charter defines the legality of war and the territorial rights of each member state through Article 2(4), there is no check or meaningful cost on the breach of the same article by veto-wielding powers of the P5. The result is an inability of the UN General Assembly and the UNSC to prevent violations of the territorial integrity of sovereign states and even acts of genocide.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Charter, which offered rise to Nato, suffered a similar anomaly: for all of Article 5's collective-security language, the alliance was better captured by its first Secretary General Lord Ismay's remark that "Nato was created to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". The same flaw, in a harsher era.

Meanwhile, the UN system's principal instrument for preventing conflict, the Security Council, carries the same anomaly today. Whatever the 10 non-permanent members intend, the five permanent, veto-wielding states can block any effort at peace enforcement. This is a system built on power asymmetry, not on the democratic judgement needed to prevent conflict in an increasingly fragmented world. That democratic retreat is visible well beyond the Council: in unilateralism, tariff wars, de-globalisation, and and the emasculation of the institutions of economic cooperation such as the World Trade Organisation.

As great-power competition rewrites the rules for weaker states, a Kantian world of cooperation is giving way to a Hobbesian one. In an environment where the subdued must fend for themselves and the Charter fails to prevent crimes against humanity, annexations, and genocide, adding more layers of privilege to the Security Council makes little sense. Reform should instead create the Council more democratic and inclusive, and raise the cost of a veto employed to shield genocide, crimes against humanity, or violations of territorial integrity.

Sans above, any reforms would be merely cosmetic and incapable of resolving the peace and security problems among nations. A number of groups have proposed competing ideas. The G4 (Brazil, Germany, India, Japan) proposes expanding both permanent and non-permanent membership: permanent seats for the G4 countries, two permanent seats for Africa, and more elected non-permanent seats. The African Group, representing all 54 African Union member states, is asking for two permanent seats with full prerogatives, veto included, plus five extra non-permanent seats.

Meanwhile, a France-Mexico initiative calls on the P5 to voluntarily refrain from using the veto in situations involving mass atrocities such as genocide, crimes against humanity and large-scale war crimes. The Uniting for Consensus (UfC) proposal, led by Pakistan and backed by Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, and South Korea, rejects any expansion of the permanent membership category, with or without veto power. It instead argues for expanding the elected non-permanent category through longer, renewable terms. The only proposal that works.

For context, a close look at these proposals demonstrates that all but the UfC model sidestep the core problem: the veto itself, and the inability of the rest of the membership to challenge it even when it is applied to pursue P5 geopolitical objectives at odds with international law, collective security, or Article 2(4). Supporting geographic representation, particularly for African nations, is worthwhile. But turning yesterday's victims of exclusion into tomorrow's veto-wielding hegemons would only deepen the present inequity.

Similarly, individual countries' pursuit of permanent seats has to be judged against the broader goals of equitable representation, justice, and a genuinely more effective Council.

While freezing the current inequity by not adding to the permanent category, the UfC is the only proposal that expands the Council through more non-permanent seats with re-election. Moreover, it does so while still enhancing regional representation from Africa, Asia-Pacific, West Asia, and Latin America. This incremental, election-based approach can adapt to shifting geopolitical realities in a way that permanent structural change cannot.

Finally, reform must be careful not to compound inequity by adding more aspirants to the permanent category. Countries like India, which have been serial violators of UNSC resolutions and have annexed disputed regions besides remaining outside UN-affiliated treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), do not fit the profile of a permanent Security Council member.

In practice, the writer is a defence and security expert with a PhD from NUST. He may be reached at [email protected].

Taken together, the developments around why attempts to reform the UN Security Council keep failing. And point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.