NEW YORK, APRIL 27 – Together with colleagues from the Uniting for Consensus group (UfC), the Italian Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Maurizio Massari met with President of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid. Focus of the meeting was the latest developments in the Intergovernmental Negotiation (ING) on the reform of the Security Council, which is approaching the end of its current session.
Ambassadors from Pakistan and South Korea also attended the meeting for UfC. Shahid thanked the group for its “active and constructive” involvement in the negotiations.
Yesterday, with the support of some eighty co-sponsors including Italy and three out of five permanent members of the Security Council holding the right to veto – US, UK France – the General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution establishing a mechanism whereby the member state (or states) that uses this prerogative to block a resolution must then account to the entire membership for the reasons behind its choice.
Speaking as coordinator of UfC at a recent meeting of the ING, Ambassador Massari noted that “the veto has a profound effect on the efficiency of the Security Council, with a paralyzing effect on decision-making capacities”. Massari was referring to the stalemate over the Ukrainian crisis in the Council. “There is no doubt about it: the veto contradicts the principles of democracy, efficiency and sovereign equality among states. Although it may have been conceived in a specific historical context, today it no longer has a plausible justification,” the Ambassador continued.
More broadly, UfC is proposing a new Council composed of 26 seats in total: 11 new members would be added to the current 10 elected non-permanent members, for a total of 21 elected non-permanent members. Nine of these eleven additional seats would have a longer term of office (in order to satisfy the aspirations of member states wishing to serve for extended periods) and would be elected by regional groups, in order to ensure a more balanced and equitable representation primarily of developing countries (above all, African and Asia-Pacific countries and small island states), the latter historically penalized in their participation in the Council. (@OnuItalia)
