The only purpose of the United Nations Security Council is to prevent armed conflicts and war, yet we have not lived one single day in the past seventy eight years without war somewhere on this planet. The primary cause for failure of the Security Council is the unanimous consent clause of Article 27 and enforcement of Article 27 paragraph 3 on abstention. The world has changed and the United Nations must change and adapt to that changing world for peace to prevail. Expanding the number of seats in the Security Council has been tried, it did not and will not work as long as the unanimous consent clause exists. The unanimous consent clause needs to be eliminated and the United Nations and United Nations Security Council needs to abide by the United Nations Charter. We need to change Article 23 Paragraph 1, Article 27 Paragraph 3, Article 108, and Article 109 Paragraph 2 as follows:
Article 23
1. The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The People’s Republic of China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.
Article 27
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.
Article 108
Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations.
Article 109
2. Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations.
Changes to the Security Council without the elimination of the unanimous consent clause is an exercise in futility which will only prolong the problem because the voting pattern of the five permanent members will not change. If we can create a functional United Nations with a functional Security Council we have many other problems that we need to solve. They are all problems we can resolve if we can create a functional United Nations that can hold our leaders and policy makers accountable for their actions. The biggest obstetrical we face is the United Nations Security Council itself.
The wars in Ukraineand Gaza are our most immediate threat to global stability and international peace. UN General Assembly Resolution 11/1 condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and demanded a full withdrawal of Russian forces. One hundred forty one member states supported that resolution. Yet the war goes on because the Security Council itself is impotent and dysfunctional. It was the Russian Federation that vetoed Security Council resolution S/2022/720 on 30 September 2022 even though according to Article 23 the Russian Federation is not even a member of the council.
The United Nations Charter is a fundamentally flawed and out of date document, the Republic of China and the United Soviet Socialist Republic were founding members of the United Nations and original members of the UN Security Council. The current UN Charter as displayed on the UN’s own website still lists The Republic of China, which is no longer a member of the United Nations, and the USSR, which no longer exists, as permanent members of the Security Council. Until the UN Charter is amended, it must be enforced as written or it becomes meaningless. The Peoples Republic of China and the Russian Federation are not members of the Security Council according to the current United Nations Charter.
Global warming, natural disasters, the resent pandemic, regional armed conflicts, and wars throughout the world have created an existential crisis for the human race which has once again opened a window of opportunity for change. That existential crisis and the inability of the Security Council to move forward where consensus does exist because of the unanimous consent clause necessitates the elimination of that clause from the United Nations Charter. If we do not correct the deficiencies in the Security Council, war and nuclear war are inevitable. It is therefore essential for our long term survival to take advantage of this opportunity to convene a General Conference of the United Nations General Assemble to resolve those charter deficiencies and create a functional United Nations