Indian Council of World Affairs

The United Nations (UN) system of multilateralism is in crisis. Resting on its three pillars of upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms, promoting socio-economic progress, and maintaining international peace and security, the UN is tottering because its peace and security pillar is fractured. This jeopardizes the implementation of the UN’s Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development is acknowledged as the “central goal”[1] of multilateralism, of direct relevance to the 134 developing countries of the Global South who constitute the majority of the 193-member UN General Assembly (UNGA). The recently held UN Summit of the Future, which adopted a Pact for the Future, was noticeable for its lack of ambition and political will in prescribing any time-bound pathway to reform the UN by reviewing the provisions of the UN Charter. 

The UN Charter 

The UN Charter treaty, consisting of 111 Articles, was negotiated between 50 states, including India, in April-June 1945. It has been signed and ratified by all the 193 UN member-states. The Charter’s objectives are to save “succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, while pursuing the “equal rights” of individuals and nations, and promoting socio-economic progress for “larger freedom”. Abjuring the use of armed force “save in the common interest”, the Charter commits to using international cooperation to “strengthen international peace and security”. 

The biggest achievement of the UN Charter is to democratize decision-making. Article 18 of the treaty gives each member-state one vote, and stipulates that the UNGA takes decisions either by consensus, or by majority voting. A two-thirds majority is required on important issues, such as elections to the bodies created by the UN Charter like the UN Security Council (UNSC) the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Armed with this mechanism of democratic decision-making, the UNGA has been able to register significant progress in implementing the objectives of the UN Charter. 

The human rights pillar 

In the human rights pillar, one of the first initiatives (co-sponsored by India) in the UNGA in 1946, was to mandate the negotiation and adoption of the UN’s Convention on Genocide, which was adopted in December 1948, making it the first UN response to outlawing mass atrocity crimes. In 1946, at the initiative of India, the UNGA inscribed and pursued the removal of racial discrimination on the basis of colour, with South Africa’s multi-party elections in 1994 giving substance to the UN Charter’s provision of equal rights for all. In 1948, Indian negotiator Hansa Mehta inserted language to reflect gender equality into Article 1 of the UNGA’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR), setting the stage for the steady evolution of empowering women across the world with equal rights. The 47-member UNGA-elected Human Rights Council (HRC) has instituted a Universal Peer Review process that monitors and assists member-states, particularly from the Global South, through a democratic decision-making process, in upholding fundamental human rights and freedoms. 

The socio-economic rights pillar 

In the socio-economic rights pillar, one of the biggest achievements of the UNGA between 1964 and 2015 has been a bottom-up process reflecting the interests of developing countries of the Global South that converged global human rights, socio-economic rights, and environmental rights. India’s Vijayalakshmi Pandit had highlighted this issue in the UNGA soon after its independence. Speaking on 19 September 1947, she had said that we “cannot eat an ideology; we cannot brandish an ideology, and feel that we are clothed and housed. Food, clothing, shelter, education, medical services‐--these are the things we need.”[2]

The increased representation of developing countries of the Global South in the 54-member elected ECOSOC resulted in bringing to the forefront issues of development into the work of the UNGA. In 1964, the Group of 77 developing countries formed the G-77 platform in the UN to focus on socio-economic development. In response, the UNGA created the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 1965. Today, the UNDP is the “face of the UN” in over 170 UN member-states, demonstrating the constructive role of the UN as a partner in their national development aspirations. India was the first Chair of the G-77. 

Between 1979 and the 1992 UN Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, developing countries of the Global South succeeded in creating a supportive multilateral rights-based framework for “development”. This included the Decision on Differential and More Preferable Treatment (also known as the Enabling Clause) for developing countries in the GATT (precursor of the World Trade Organization) in 1979 to enable their effective participation in international trade; the UNGA Declaration on the Right to Development (DRTD) as an “inalienable human right” in 1986; and the Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR) provision of international law, codified by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. The CBDR enabled developing countries to meet their legal obligations in climate change negotiations while keeping in mind the historical disparity of economic development between developed and developing countries. 

The post-Cold War period from 1992 to 2015 was marked by the success of the developing countries of the Global South in the UNGA to bring their aspirations into the core focus of the UN through negotiating Agenda 2030 with its 17 SDGs. In a significant recognition of the need to carry public sentiment transparently and democratically into the work of the negotiations, the SDGs were formulated through multiple stakeholder participation by governments, businesses, academia, and civil society. In turn, this provided the additional financial and human resources needed by governments to implement the SDGs through what India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to as a “whole of society” approach.[3]

The SDGs include 169 specific targets, including eradication of poverty, removal of hunger, improvement of education, health, and gender equality, as well as environmental goals for clean water and energy, sustaining the maritime and land domains. The holistic nature of sustainable development is illustrated by SDGs on economic issues, such as employment, infrastructure, innovation, urbanization, consumption patterns and reducing inequalities.

In governance terms, SDG 16.8 commits to the equitable participation of developing countries in multilateral institutions including the UNSC and IMF, while endorsing a “partnership” approach to implement Agenda 2030. Although Agenda 2030 is “universal” in its application, the most significant impact of the SDGs is on the developing countries of the Global South. The agreed overarching SDG of Agenda 2030 is the “eradication of poverty” contained in SDG 1. The focus is on lifting hundreds of millions of people, including in India, above the World Bank’s poverty line of $ 2.15 a day by 31 December 2030.

The political pillar 

In the political pillar, the UNGA set in motion the process of decolonization, bringing in newly independent developing countries of the Global South into its fold. The process was catalysed by the independence of India from British colonial rule in August 1947. By December 1963, the UNGA was able to adopt significant resolutions to integrate the presence of newly independent former colonial countries in UN structures. 

Seeking greater representation in the UN bodies that took decisions on their priorities, developing countries of the Global South ensured that the number of elected members in the UNSC was increased from six to ten by amending Article 23, and the number of elected members in the ECOSOC was increased from 18 to 27 (and in a subsequent Charter amendment in 1971 to its current 54) by amending Article 61 of the Charter. It is worth emphasizing that despite apprehensions rooted in Article 108 of the Charter, giving the five permanent members (P5) of the UNSC veto powers in ratifying amendments to the UN Charter proposed by the UNGA, none of the P5 eventually blocked the UNGA’s decisions. 

The biggest threat to implementing the SDGs today comes from “numerous crises” identified by the UNGA’s SDGs Summit in September 2023. These crises include the adverse impact of the unprecedented Coronavirus pandemic on poverty eradication, equality, and employment; the restrictions on committed flows of multilateral finance to developing countries of the Global South to build their capacities to implement Agenda 2030; contestations on transfer of technologies (including the Covid vaccine) to developing countries of the Global South; and increased protectionist unilateralism. All these crises have been aggravated by the fragmentation of the UN’s political pillar. 

The anomaly within the UN Charter 

Under Article 24 of the Charter, member-states of the UN give “primary responsibility” for the “maintenance of international peace and security” to the UNSC. This impacts on three related provisions in the Charter. Under Article 12, the UNGA is not allowed to make any “recommendation” on a “dispute or situation” which is on the agenda of the UNSC, unless requested to do so by the UNSC. Under Article 25 of the Charter, all UN member-states “agree to accept and carry out” the decisions of the UNSC. Decisions of the UNSC, under Article 27.3, require “the concurring votes of the permanent members”. 

Article 23 of the Charter identifies the P5 as the “Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America”. There are no permanent members from the developing countries of the Global South with the veto power in the UNSC. 

This gives rise to the biggest anomaly within the text of the UN Charter on decision-making. While the UNGA under Article 18 takes decisions on the basis of the equal participation of each member-state with one vote, through consensus or majority voting, the UNSC takes decisions only with the “concurring votes” of each of the P5 as set down in Article 27.3.[4]

When the UN Charter was negotiated between April-June 1945, the UNSC’s decision taking procedures were inserted into the negotiating text through the letter of invitation extended by the United States as the host country on behalf of the P5. The role and composition of the P5 in the UNSC had been decided by the Republic of China, USSR, UK and USA at their meeting on 7 October 1944 in Dumbarton Oaks in the United States.[5] The veto privilege on decisions to be adopted by the UNSC, proposed by the United States, was agreed on during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 by the Soviet Union, UK, and USA,[6] who extended this privilege to China and France. In its letter of invitation issued on 3 March 1945 to the 45 participating states on behalf of the P5, the United States had stipulated that participating countries should not reopen these agreements, which would become part of the text of the UN Charter. 

The UNSC 

Despite taking credit for having prevented the outbreak of a Third World War, the UNSC has been unable to prevent the outbreak of a growing number of crises worldwide, impacting on more than 2 billion people.[7] These crises have been caused by two major factors. 

First, a growing confrontation between the P5. Recently declassified documents from the UK’s National Archives establish that this confrontation began in May 1945, even as the UN Charter was being drafted, with the UK putting in place plans for “regime change” in its wartime ally the Soviet Union.[8] This metamorphosed into the creation of armed confrontation between the Western P5 powers and the Soviet Union following the creation of the NATO in April 1949.[9] The Soviet Union responded by the creation of the Warsaw Pact following the integration into the NATO of West Germany (a declared “enemy state” under Article 53 of the UN Charter) in May 1955. Confrontation between the P5, including through proxy armed and hybrid conflicts, continues till today, and has been made more complex by the emergence of China as a peer competitor of the United States.[10] Armed confrontation between the P5 impinges directly on their Charter obligations in Chapter VI and Article 2.3 for the peaceful settlement of disputes, calling into question their leadership role in the UNSC. 

Second, the non-representation of developing countries of the Global South in the UNSC’s decision-making process. Despite developing countries of the Global South, including India, seeking equal decision-making powers in the UNSC through the UNGA since 1979, and their contribution of hundreds of thousands of troops for UN peacekeeping operations deployed by the UNSC, political settlements negotiated through the diplomatic space created by UN peacekeeping have dwindled. A new trend has emerged of political instability and economic disruptions being fanned by terrorist violence, leading to the winding up or emasculation of UN peacekeeping missions, particularly in Africa, due to withdrawal of consent of the government hosting the UN mission. 

The consequences of these two factors are visible in the fading impact of the UNSC on the ground, where it is not even able to enforce its own unanimous decisions. This includes resolution 2202 on Ukraine of 17 February 2015, resolution 2334 on West Asia of 23 December 2016, and resolution 2513 on Afghanistan of 10 March 2020. The inability of the UNSC, despite powers given to it by the Charter under Article 41 (economic sanctions) and Article 42 (use of armed force) to enforce its decisions, has opened the door for non-UN armed coalitions such as the NATO to usurp the functions of the UNSC, including initiating armed action and imposing unilateral punitive measures such as sanctions. This has directly impacted the interests of developing countries of the Global South.

The Pact for the Future 

In preparations for the 2024 UN Summit of the Future, a High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism appointed by the UN Secretary-General submitted its Report on 18 April 2023, which inter alia recommended a Charter Review focused on UNSC reform.[11] The adamant refusal of the P5 to allow any reference to a Charter Review for fear of losing or diluting their veto privilege became the biggest barrier in preparations in the UNGA for the Summit. The P5 stance went against the interests of the Global South, incrementally identified through a series of three virtual Voice of the Global South Summits hosted by India in January and November 2023 and August 2024.[12]

The lack of will to meet the priorities of the Global South was evident in the Pact for the Future adopted by the UN’s Summit of the Future in September 2024. The Pact did not endorse any Charter Review Conference on UNSC reform. It reiterated old commitments to the SDGs already made by UN member-states when adopting Agenda 2030 in September 2015. It conspicuously erased any role for the UN’s HRC in ensuring a human-centric implementation of the SDGs. The Pact strayed outside the treaty framework of the UN Charter by calling for action to reform multilateral institutions like the IMF and WTO, both of which are governed by their distinct legal treaty frameworks and not the UN Charter. The resultant ambivalence allowed the Pact to become the target for major P5 countries like the United States within a fortnight of its unanimous adoption by the UNGA.  

Despite hosting the UN headquarters and contributing 22% of the UN’s general budget,[13] the United States asserted in a lengthy statement on 7 October 2024 in the UNGA that the Pact for the Future and its annexes “do not create or otherwise change any rights or obligations under international law.” It felt the pact also “does not accurately reflect existing international law in all respects.” It affirmed that “there is no internationally agreed global estimate of an SDG financing gap”. It restricted the Pact’s call for the use of technology to implement the SDGs only to “voluntary technology transfers on mutually agreed terms”. It questioned the “right to development” as “not recognized in any of the “core UN human rights conventions”, which “does not have an agreed international meaning.”[14] By questioning the unanimous nature of the UNGA decision on the Pact for the Future through such caveats, the United States brought to the forefront the basic anomaly regarding the decisions taken in the UN. 

The “leadership role” of the United States in creating the UN in 1945 is today challenged by China. Contributing 20% of the UN’s general budget,[15] China has incrementally raised its profile in influencing the UN system. It has aligned with the developing countries of the Global South in asserting that the Pact for the Future “puts the development agenda at its centre and reaffirms the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities across all areas of development.” It has urged developed countries to “shoulder their historical responsibilities such as development assistance and climate financing”, and called for greater inclusiveness in technology governance issues to bridge digital divides.[16] To walk the talk, China has sought to provide the UN with Chinese-formulated and Chinese-funded global platforms. These include pushing China’s “Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative”[17] as UN projects, without any discussions or negotiations on these in the UNGA, including by developing countries of the Global South. 

Article 109 and UN Charter review 

What is the way forward? Under the UN Charter’s provisions, UNGA decisions, including those taken under Uniting for Peace resolutions, are recommendatory and not mandatory. The Charter limits the UNGA to discussions on general issues, encouraging international cooperation through UN specialized agencies under Chapter IX of the Charter and the ECOSOC under Chapter X of the Charter. On the other hand, an increasingly ineffective, unrepresentative, and undemocratic UNSC holds the legal right under the Charter to make all UN member-states comply with its decisions. The first step to reform the UN lies in harmonizing this glaring anomaly in the UN Charter. 

The negotiators of the UN Charter had confronted opposition to the veto provision of Article 27.3 during the San Francisco Conference itself. Despite delegations from Australia and India attempting to overcome this provision, the United States prevailed in integrating the Yalta Conference outcomes on the veto into the Charter, with an open-ended assurance that the provisions would be reviewed through dialogue.[18] India’s Sir A. Ramaswamy Mudaliar, who had led the Indian delegation negotiating the UN Charter, and signed the treaty on behalf of India, explicitly referred to the Charter’s review provision in the first statement by India at the First Session of the UNGA on 18 January 1946. He hoped that “at the end of the ten years' period when we re‐examine the Charter, there will be unanimity again, and that this United Nations Charter will not require all the safeguards which big nations sometimes claim and small nations so unwillingly give.”[19]

A recent Western academic proposal considers that amending the provisions of the UN Charter to reform the UN are not realistic. Instead, it recommends adopting a “non-amendment” approach “through evolving interpretations” of the Charter to reform the UN.[20] The limitations of such a proposal with regard to an existing inter-governmental treaty, which has a clearly written review provision, are self-evident. Unless the decision-making methods of the UNGA and UNSC contained within the treaty are harmonized by using the review provision, the UN Charter will be further fractured, to the detriment of the vast majority of its members from the Global South. 

The review provision in the UN Charter is Article 109. It sets out a phased three-stage process. In the first stage, Article 109 provides for a “General Conference” of the member-states of the UN to be convened for “reviewing the present Charter”. The decision to convene the General Conference requires a two-third majority in the UNGA (129 out of 193 member-states) and 9 votes out of 15 in the UNSC (without the veto of the P5). In the second stage, Article 109 provides for the UN member-states participating in the General Conference to recommend any amendments to the UN Charter by a “two-thirds vote of the conference”. In the third stage, any proposed amendments to the UN Charter would come into effect when ratified by two-thirds of the members of the UN, including the P5 of the UNSC. 

It is a curious fact that even the first stage of a UN Charter Review General Conference has never been activated during the past 80 years of the Charter’s existence. As the UN moves to mark its 80^th anniversary in September 2025, the priority must be on initiating diplomatic action to redress this major lacuna. India, having hosted three virtual summits of the Global South to amplify the call for “reformed multilateralism”, must take the lead in this process by calling for the convening of a General Conference of the UN during the 80^th anniversary of the UN in 2025.

*****

*Amb. Asoke Mukerji retired from the Indian Foreign Service as India’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN in New York in December 2015. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi.

Endnotes

[1] United Nations, “Pact for the Future”, September 2024. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sotf-pact_for_the_future_adopted.pdf

[2] Permanent Mission of India, New York. “Statement by Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit “UNGA 2^nd Session, 19 September 1947. Page 5. https://pminewyork.gov.in/pdf/uploadpdf/64080lms2.pdf

[3] Press Information Bureau, India. “PM’s address in ECOSOC’s commemoration of UN’s 75^th Anniversary”, 17 July 2020. https://pib.gov.in/pressreleaseiframepage.aspx?PRID=1639468

[4] United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold Library, Yearbook of the United Nations 1946-1947.  https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/860253?ln=en&v=pdf

[5] Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “311 Dumbarton Oaks Proposals” 7 October 1944. https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/historical-documents/Pages/volume-07/311-dumbarton-oaks-proposals

[6] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Yalta Conference 1945”. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/yalta-conf

[7] The United Nations. “War’s greatest cost is its human toll”, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, 30 March 2022. https://press.un.org/en/2022/sgsm21216.doc.htm

[8] The National Archives, UK. “Operation Unthinkable”, 22 May 1945. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cold-war-on-file/operation-unthinkable/

[9] Truman Library Institute, “Creation of NATO”, 18 March 2024. Both East and West Germany became members of the UN only on 18 September 1973. https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/this-day-in-history-nato/

[10] The White House, United States.  “National Security Strategy” October 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf

[11] United Nations, High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism Report, 18 April 2023, page 49. https://highleveladvisoryboard.org/breakthrough/pdf/highleveladvisoryboard_breakthrough_fullreport.pdf

[12] Ministry of External Affairs, India. “Chair’s Summary”, 20 August 2024. https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/38186/Chairs_Summary_3rd_Voice_of_Global_South_Summit_August_17_2024

[13] United Nations, Report of the Committee on Contributions, A/79/11 dated June 2024. Page 40. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/208/46/pdf/n2420846.pdf

[14] United Nations, “Explanation of Position by the United States on the Pact for the Future and its annexes, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations”, Agenda Item 123, 7 October 2024. https://estatements.unmeetings.org/estatements/10.0010/20241007100000000/FHDPfs-Bt/pCQwDdMVL_nyc_en.pdf

[15] United Nations, Report of the Committee on Contributions, A/79/11 dated June 2024. Page 35. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/208/46/pdf/n2420846.pdf

[16] Permanent Mission of China to the UN, New York. “Statement by Ambassador Fu Cong”, 7 October 2024. http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/chinaandun/20191112/202410/t20241008_11503315.htm

[17] Ibid. “Statement by Ambassador Dai Bing”, 7 October 2024. http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/chinaandun/yshy/202410/t20241022_11511526.htm

[18] Sinha, Dilip. “Veto provision in the U.N. Charter”, Indian Foreign Affairs Journal Vol. 14, No. 4, October–December 2019, 267-274. https://www.associationdiplomats.org/Publications/ifaj/Vol14/14.4/IFAJ%20-%2014.4%20-%204%20-%20ARTICLE%201%20-%20DSinha.pdf

[19] Permanent Mission of India, New York. “Statement by Mr. Ramaswamy Mudaliar” First Session of UNGA, 18 January 1946, page 3. https://pminewyork.gov.in/pdf/uploadpdf/80686lms1.pdf

[20] Hathaway, Oona A. and Mills, Maggie and Zimmerman, Heather, Crisis and Change at the United Nations: Non-Amendment Reform and Institutional Evolution (May 5, 2024). Michigan Journal of International Law, 2025, Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4817650