Ex-UNSC Chief backs India for permanent seat at UNSC, says ‘world’s third-most powerful country,’ deserves rightful place

By R Anil Kumar

• ‘India deserves permanent seat on UN security council, UK should step aside’, says former UNSC President and Singaporean diplomat (Kishore Mahbubani on X)

• According to former United Nations Security Council President and Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, the UK, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, should ‘step aside’ for India

• “India is undeniably the third-most powerful country in the world today, after the United States and China. Great Britain is no longer ‘great’,” he remarked

• Kishore Mahbubani has called for urgent reforms to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)

• As wars rage in various places around the world, never before has the issue of reform of Security Council been more pressing

UNSC, September 2. As the ‘third most-powerful country’ in the world, India should get its ‘rightful place’ as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), says Ex-Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, a former president of the top UN body.

The United Kingdom, one of the five permanent members, should ‘step aside’ for India, he said.

“There is absolutely no question that India is the third most-powerful country today after the United States and China. The Great Britain (UK) is no longer great,” Mahbubani said.

On why he thinks that the UK should relinquish its permanent membership, Mahbubani, who headed the UNSC between January 2001 and May 2002, stated that fearing ‘backlash,’ the UK has not used its veto power ‘for decades.’

“So, the logical things is to give up its seat to India,” Singapore’s former Permanent Representative to the UN, added.

India, where the British rule ended in August 1947, is the fifth-largest economy in the world, having surpassed the latter in September 2022.

The US, UK, France, China, and Russia, hold the five permanent seats in the Security Council, where India has had eight terms as a non-permanent member, most recently in 2021-22.

Commenting on the broader need for UN reforms, Mahbubani noted that the founders of the UN designed the organisation to include the major powers of their time, ensuring these nations had vested interests in maintaining its effectiveness.
“The founders of the UN learned from the early 20th-century collapse of the League of Nations that if a great power leaves, the organisation falls apart,” he said. “However, they also believed that the UNSC should be represented by the great powers of today, not those of the past. Unfortunately, they did not create a mechanism to update the council’s membership” he stated.

“Violence and war continue to spread in regions across the world, while the United Nations seems paralyzed due largely to the divisions in the Security Council,” he said.

With the world changing quickly, the Council is “dangerously falling short” of its mandate as the primary custodian for the maintenance of international peace and security, the calls for UNSC reforms have grown amid widening conflict worldwide.

Thus, it is no surprise, that, time and again, the Security Council has been unable to live up to expectations in addressing some of the most serious threats to international peace and security in a timely and effective manner.

Security Council reform a must, to end ‘paralysis’

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC):

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.Its powers as outlined in the United Nations Charter includes establishing peacekeeping operations, enacting international sanctions, and authorizing military action. The UNSC is the only UN body with authority to issue resolutions that are binding on member states.

The Security Council consists of fifteen members, of which five are permanent: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These were the great powers that were the victors of World War II.