France assures support to India, three others for permanent seat at UN Security Council

France on Thursday (Nov 16) assured support to India, Brazil, Germany and Japan for the permanent membership at the UN Security Council, asserting its longstanding stance on reforming the Security Council.

India, Brazil, Germany and Japan are also the part of G4 political cooperative alliance who support each other's bids for permanent seats in the UN Security Council.

Nicolas de Rivière, France's Permanent Representative in the United Nations said that "reform of the Security Council is necessary for its authority and representativeness".

Rivière suggested that an enlarged Council could have up to 25 members, "including new permanent and non-permanent members". 

"We would also like to see a stronger presence of African countries, including among the permanent members," the French ambassador to the UN added, reflecting a sense of bilateral convergence between Paris and New Delhi to prioritise inclusion of African nations to ensure an equitable representation at multilateral high-tables. 

Later, India's Permanent UN Representative Ruchira Kamboj noted that under India's presidency of the G20, Africa secured a permanent seat at the table.

This, Kamboj said, "serves as a compelling call to action" for reforms at the UN Security Council. 

'We have no voice at the high table': India on Global South's absence in the UNSC

A day before India hosted the second edition of the Voice of Global South summit in virtual mode, India at the United Nations said that it shares its collective angst with the countries of Global South that on the issues of core concern to the South, "we have no voice at the high table". 

Global South refers to countries often characterised as developing, less developed, primarily located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and generally do not have an equitable representation in key UN bodies. 

India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ruchira Kamboj made these formal comments while addressing the 'question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Security Council'. 

Kamboj called out the nature of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGNs), an informal mechanism at the United Nations to address the question of reforms in the UN Security Council, slamming the lack of transparency in the process put in place in 2008.

Since 2008, the Inter Governmental Negotiations (IGN) occur in the informal plenary of a session of the UN General Assembly. These "informal" negotiations are meant to address the question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council. 

Due to their "informal" nature, the Inter-Governmental Negotiation (IGN) on UN Security Council reform does not have any draft text on the table to negotiate. 

"There are no records of previous meetings of the intergovernmental negotiations available with the UN. There are no deadlines set for the negotiations to conclude. Even the two co-chairs of the negotiations are appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly from the same side of the issue, i.e., the elected non-permanent members," Ambassador Asoke Mukerji, India’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations told WION.

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India is a staunch advocate of formalising the Inter-Governmental Negotiations for the UN reforms. New Delhi calls for "a clear deadline to complete negotiations" towards the reforms, "and if there is no consensus on the outcome of the negotiations, then a recorded two third majority vote in the UN General Assembly can be done as provided for in the UN Charter," Ambassador Mukerji added. 

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"Fifteen years since their inception, our dialogue remains largely confined to exchanging statements, speaking at, rather than with each other. No negotiating text. No time frame. And no defined end goal. We turn up each, year make statements and go back to the drawing board," Kamboj said on Thursday.

The discourse related to the reforms in the United Nations Security Council is picking up the pace ahead of the UN Summit of the Future scheduled for 22 and 23 September 2024. Described by the United Nations as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to mend eroded trust between the countries, the summit is aimed to forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and what be done to secure it.