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LONDON: The persistence of wars and conflicts, despite humanity’s best endeavors to eradicate them, is one of the most frustrating and costly aspects of international affairs and human existence.

After the Second World War, the establishment of the UN, and especially the Security Council, its centerpiece for ensuring peace and security, was intended to provide the ultimate answer to war prevention, or at least its quick resolution.

Even if the UN has not entirely failed, it has only partially served its intended purpose. This failure is due to the inherent structure of the international system, of which the primary building block is the nation state, which is reluctant to cede certain aspects of its security to a global collective security body.

It is also the structure and mandate of the UN, particularly the Security Council and its exclusive club of five permanent members with the right of veto, that hinder its effectiveness in preventing and resolving conflicts.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter sets the vision and imperative for all members to refrain from the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” The Security Council was established as the primary universal mechanism to achieve this objective.

The UN founding fathers set themselves a very high bar for norms of behavior in the international arena, aiming to radically reform how political units, mainly states, engage with one another — through diplomacy rather than the use of force or any other act of aggression, which had been the norm from the dawn of history.

To achieve this, states needed to recognize that their national interest is best served through the collective interest of all member states.

However, this lesson has never been learned, and the UN, throughout its existence, has not managed to change that deep-seated modus operandi. As a collective security tool, it is reactive, and crucially, very slow.

The design of the Security Council reflects both the hopeful sentiment prevailing in the aftermath of the Second World War and the prevailing power structure of the time.

The Security Council has five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the UK and the US — collectively known as the P5. Any one of them has the power to veto any resolution brought in front of it.

This privileged status was bestowed on the leading victorious powers of the war and their allies, who reshaped the postwar international order, but it is now widely regarded as archaic and in desperate need of change.

The General Assembly elects the other ten Security Council members for a term of two years, distributed based on geographical rotation, but they are not afforded veto power.

The Security Council’s presidency rotates monthly, enabling the ten non-permanent members, which are elected by a two-thirds vote of the UN General Assembly, to have a say in setting the agenda of this body.

Under the UN Charter, the Security Council was given extensive powers, including the authority to investigate any dispute or situation that might lead to international friction and to recommend methods to resolve or at least mitigate such disputes.

It can also formulate plans to regulate armaments and call on member states to apply economic sanctions and measures, including military action to stop aggression.

One of the Security Council’s main powers is mandating peacekeeping missions with the aim of promoting reconciliation, assisting with the implementation of peace agreements, or performing mediation and good offices, as well as more forceful actions authorized by the charter.

Since its inception, the UN has conducted 38 peacekeeping missions, 11 of which are currently operational in various locations, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Western Sahara, and Jammu and Kashmir, where they observe the ceasefire, promote security and stability in Kosovo, and are deployed along the Israeli borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Beyond these relative successes of peacekeeping operations, there have been marked failures. Most notoriously, UN peacekeeping operations failed to prevent the Rwandan genocide in 1994, as well as the one occurring in the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in 1995.

In most cases, due to the limited mandate of these operations, their successes or failures depend on the will of the antagonistic sides to maintain the peace or, at the very least, not to renew hostilities.

Criticism has been directed at the Security Council in particular for its failure to prevent conflicts or bring them to an immediate end and for the lack of agility to take the necessary actions in resolving long-running conflicts.

Such examples include the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, despite numerous resolutions, continues due to the non-compliance of the main protagonists and lack of enforcement by the international community.

In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is the US which blocks most resolutions that are critical of Israel, such as a call for a ceasefire in the current war in Gaza, or the recognition of a Palestinian state.

The act of aggression by a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia, against its Ukrainian neighbor came as a particularly hard blow to the credibility of this institution and a clear illustration of how the veto power has been abused.

Also on issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change, the Security Council has been found wanting in providing answers to urgent global challenges.

Despite these failures, neither the UN nor its Security Council has been adequately reformed. As a result, it is increasingly seen as anachronistic, with hierarchical structures represented by the non-democratic powers of the permanent members’ ability to veto.

Indeed, this can hardly be justified in an organization whose charter promotes the principles of “equal rights” and “sovereign equality” when at the same time it maintains the power of the Global North and marginalizes the Global South.

Years of criticism led the General Assembly in 2007 to establish what is known as the “intergovernmental negotiations” to advance the question of equitable representation, increase the membership of the Security Council, and to ensure more accountability and transparency.

Despite endless rounds of negotiations, the membership issue remains unresolved as the P5 oppose losing their privileged position.

The odds of a meaningful reform of the Security Council are slim because amending the UN Charter requires the support of the General Assembly, followed by ratification by two-thirds of UN member states, in addition to the consent of all the Security Council’s permanent members.

Hence, the main reforms focus on increasing transparency and procedural matters.

For now, the Security Council remains the main UN organ for discussing issues of peace and security, and the robust debates and resolutions that emerge are affecting how individual countries behave in their bilateral and multilateral engagements, including the exertion of their influence.

Yet, the criticism of not adding more members from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as the overuse of the veto power, need to be addressed.

If the Security Council is to remain relevant and fulfil its mission as set out in the UN Charter in the 21st century, these issues cannot be ignored, and would not be impossible to achieve.