In Hindsights
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With the Security Council elections behind them, incoming Council members—Algeria, Guyana, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, and Slovenia—are now starting to discuss the allocation of the chairs and vice-chairs of the subsidiary bodies. For many years this process was shrouded in secrecy, with the permanent members deciding how to allocate these positions, often with minimal consultation.
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The 77th session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold elections on 6 June for five non-permanent seats of the Security Council for the 2024-2025 term.
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In the space of about three years, the Council has grappled with two major crises—the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine—that could have threatened its ability to function. Yet, except for a brief moment at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council continued to operate, adapting its working methods to new realities. These twin crises have both changed and challenged how the Council exercises its role, illuminating the role of working methods as the Council’s foundation for functioning in hard times.
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By the end of April, the United Nations Secretary-General will publish a report on the financing of African Union (AU)-led peace support operations (AUPSOs).
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In March, the Security Council is expected to conduct its 70th visiting mission since 1992. This trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will be only the second Council visiting mission since October 2019, and the first since it travelled to Mali and Niger in October 2021. In the few years preceding the outbreak of COVID-19, the Council undertook multiple such missions every year: five trips each in 2016, 2017 and 2019, with three in 2018.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was a seismic event with devastating consequences for the people of Ukraine and far-reaching effects on the global economy. The invasion is widely regarded as a flagrant violation of a fundamental tenet of international law and of the UN Charter: namely, the commitment to refrain from the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a member state. It laid bare the Security Council’s inability to maintain international peace and security when one of its permanent members unilaterally decides to wage war.
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2022 was a turbulent year for the Security Council, its functioning tested by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. The value of the UN Charter became a central theme in many members’ interventions, and the Council referred a situation to the General Assembly for the first time in forty years. Within the Council, the invasion exacerbated the trust deficit among members, making it harder to find common ground on many issues.
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Just over a year ago, Ireland, Kenya and Mexico formed a “Presidency Trio for Women, Peace and Security” (WPS), pledging to make WPS “a top priority” of their respective presidencies in September, October and November 2021. During the press conference on the Council’s programme of work for September 2021, Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason (Ireland) described the initiative as “a golden thread” that would run through the Irish, Kenyan and Mexican presidencies.
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Transitional justice is a complex and abiding issue in the aftermath of conflict or systemic oppression. International practice suggests—and experts generally agree—that understandings and definitions of transitional justice differ, depending on the context, and that there is no universal model. Acknowledging the breadth of transitional justice is helpful to seeing the variety of political and practical entry points to the issue.
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The current war in Ukraine, which has shown the impotence of the UN Security Council when one of its permanent members goes to war in violation of the UN Charter, has brought renewed energy to the debate over reforming the Council. Security Council reform has been an ongoing topic of discussion in the UN General Assembly since the early post-Cold War period, with reform pressures tending to intensify in response to an international crisis that exposes the structural weaknesses of the Security Council.
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With the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (RevCon) ending in disappointment last week, failing to step up to “the urgency of the moment”, what avenues exist for UN Security Council regulation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? The question is a critical one.
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With the Security Council the master of its own procedures, and periodic challenges to its use of formal discussions, the Council has turned to a range of informal formats to conduct exchanges which members regard as useful or necessary. 2021 saw Council members’ highest-ever use of informal Arria-formula meetings; the waning of COVID-19 brought a return of 2018’s offsite “sofa talks”; and in 2022, a Security Council resolution encourages the use of a bimonthly Informal Interactive Dialogue.
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There has been a string of military takeovers in Africa in the last two years. Since August 2020, power has changed hands unconstitutionally six times in five countries: Burkina Faso (January 2022), Sudan (October 2021), Guinea (September 2021), Chad (April 2021), and Mali (August 2020 and May 2021). Two other African countries saw thwarted coup attempts in this period, Niger in March 2021 and Guinea-Bissau in January 2022, the latter of which led to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deploying a force to the country.
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The 76th session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold elections on 9 June for five non-permanent seats of the Security Council for the 2022-2023 term.
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The veto power conferred by the UN Charter is, after permanency itself, the most significant distinction between permanent and non-permanent members of the Security Council. The UN would not have been founded without the five permanent members having the power...
