Working Methods Open Debate
Tomorrow (19 August), the Security Council will hold its annual open debate on working methods. The open debate will be held under the agenda item “Implementation of the note by the President of the Security Council (S/2024/507)”, referring to the most recent version of the comprehensive compendium of Council working methods. Shamala Kandiah Thompson, the Executive Director of Security Council Report, is expected to brief.
Denmark and Pakistan, who were the co-chairs of the Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions (IWG) in 2025, have circulated a concept note (S/2026/649) in advance of the meeting. (The 2026 chairs of the subsidiary bodies have yet to be agreed.) The concept note asserts that enhancing and updating the Council’s working methods “can contribute to a more transparent, inclusive, effective and efficient Security Council, ultimately allowing it to better uphold its mandate to maintain international peace and security”. Among the questions posed in the concept note to help guide the discussion are:
- How can novel working methods approaches be employed to bridge divisions across the Security Council?
- How can the process of selecting chairs and vice-chairs of subsidiary bodies be improved, given the continued deadlock amongst Council members on the current package?
- What measures, if any, could be taken to ensure a fairer, clearer, and more consistent application of rule 37 and rule 39 of the provisional rules of procedure across the Council, ensuring meaningful and consistent participation of specially affected States?
- How can the Security Council’s working methods be improved to enhance transparency and inclusivity, considering ongoing processes such as the 2026 Secretary-General selection?
Kandiah Thompson is expected to focus her remarks on the selection process for chairs and co-chairs of subsidiary bodies; the selection process for the next Secretary General; opportunities for the Council to work with the next Secretary General; and the importance of visiting missions.
The Council’s ten elected members (E10) will deliver a joint statement, as they have in all working methods open debates since 2019. This year’s E10 statement will be delivered by Liberia, the E10 coordinator for the month of August. Several other groupings of member states are also expected to deliver joint statements, including the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group (ACT), the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter, the Nordic countries, and the Benelux countries. The Permanent Observer of the AU to the UN will participate in the meeting as well.
Several key themes are expected to be addressed in the open debate. The ongoing delay in the appointment of the chairs of subsidiary bodies is likely to be a major focus of the discussion. Some speakers are expected to maintain that this impasse has hindered the Council’s ability to carry out its responsibility under the UN Charter to maintain international peace and security, including by depriving the body of well-functioning monitoring, reporting, and accountability tools. Some may suggest proposals for amending the appointment process to avoid repeating the current experience. It appears that the E10 and the five incoming Council members (Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe) are planning to hold a stakeout prior to tomorrow’s meeting to express their concern with the impasse and to call for it to be resolved.
Another prominent topic in tomorrow’s meeting is expected to be the process of selecting the next Secretary-General. Several speakers are likely to underscore the importance of fostering inclusivity, transparency and fairness in the process. Issues that could be raised include whether the Council should release the results of straw polls and whether candidates should participate in straw polls prior to participating in interactive dialogues in the General Assembly and meeting informally with the Council.
With respect to the later point, the five permanent members of the Council (P5), sometimes joined by other member states, generally prefer not having a mandatory sequence of steps for the candidates to follow, or setting a deadline for the submission of candidate nominations. In contrast, other member states have argued for a more standardised and predictable process to uphold the transparency gains achieved during the 2015/2016 process and to ensure that the General Assembly’s role is not limited to merely endorsing the Council’s recommendation. In this regard, the Council’s decision to allow Olara Otunnu to be considered in the 30 July straw poll without having participated in the dialogues with the General Assembly and the Security Council elicited criticism from some member states. (For more on the straw polls, please see our 29 July What’s in Blue story. For background on the Secretary General selection process more broadly, see our 15 April research report Power, Process and Participation: The Search for the Next Secretary-General).
Penholdership is another issue that will likely be raised tomorrow, as has been the norm in recent years. Noting that the P3 members (France, the UK and the US) continue to hold the pen on most files, some member states may maintain that the wider distribution of penholding responsibilities would make the Council operate more fairly and effectively. Russia has been especially critical of P3 penholders, including in working methods open debates; in this regard, it has accused P3 penholders of colonial attitudes and claimed that they tend to ignore the input of host countries and other regional actors. The P3, for their part, have tended to cite their institutional memory and capacity as the main reason for their prominent role in the penholder system. In addition, they have highlighted their willingness to share the pen on some files, as the UK did during last year’s open debate on working methods.
Tomorrow, some speakers may discuss invitations to briefers under rules 37 and 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure. In recent years, disagreements over which “specially affected” member states can participate in Council meetings without a vote under rule 37 or which civil society briefers are qualified to brief under rule 39 have led to significant tensions among Council members.
Another issue that may be discussed tomorrow is the decades-long disregard for the obligatory abstention provision of Article 27(3) of the UN Charter, which stipulates that any Council member that is a party to a dispute shall not vote in Council decisions of a substantive nature under Chapter VI (that is, those related to the peaceful settlement of disputes) and under Article 52(3) in Chapter VIII. The September 2024 Pact for the Future—agreed by world leaders through intergovernmental negotiations and intended to provide a roadmap for adapting international cooperation and institutions to today’s realities and the challenges of the future—asserts the determination of UN member states to adhere to all the provisions of the UN Charter, “including article 27 (3)”. A draft resolution is currently under discussion in the General Assembly calling for Council members to adhere to the obligatory abstention outlined in this provision of the Charter. Notwithstanding calls from several UN member states for adherence to the obligatory abstention, several of the Council’s permanent members appear resistant to supporting the application of this Charter provision.
Some members may also advocate for veto restraint in tomorrow’s meeting, especially in cases in which atrocity crimes are at hand. In this regard, some speakers may express their support for the ACT Code of Conduct and the French-Mexican “Political Declaration on Suspension of Veto Powers in Cases of Mass Atrocity”. There may also be references to the “veto initiative”—which was launched in 2022 and calls for the General Assembly to meet within ten working days whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council—as a form of accountability and transparency. Although only one draft resolution has been vetoed so far in 2026, the trend in recent years has been towards an increase in the use of the veto. (For background on the veto, see our 23 March research report Living with the Veto.)
Some members may advocate for structural reform of the Security Council in tomorrow’s meeting. Calls for Security Council reform continue to resonate among the UN’s wider membership, fueled by their view that the Council’s composition does not reflect current geopolitical realities and by the body’s failure to meet many of the current peace and security challenges facing the world. In this regard, a number of speakers may advocate for the inter-governmental negotiations (IGN)—the General Assembly process responsible for addressing Security Council reform—to pay special attention to under-represented regions, especially Africa, which is home to more than a quarter of the UN’s member states but does not possess a permanent seat.
Other issues that could be discussed tomorrow include the importance of consulting with host countries of peace operations, regional and sub-regional organisations, and civil society; the need to strike a balance between open and closed meetings to promote transparency while safeguarding the necessary confidentiality; and the need to avoid the unintended adverse humanitarian effects of sanctions.
As a follow up to tomorrow’s meeting, Denmark and Pakistan are expected to produce an analytical summary of the proposals made at the open debate.
