by Cosimo Graziani
New York – In its 80 years of existence, the United Nations Organization has never experienced a period of weakness like the current one. Long gone are the days when it was the scene of clashes between the Western and Communist blocs, which fought each other with heated exchanges, photographs, and shoes thrown at the podium. Given the current international situation, which threatens conflicts that could escalate into global conflicts, some analysts fear that the United Nations could suffer the same fate as the League of Nations, which disappeared after a long and painful process of delegitimization.
Revitalizing the UN requires an internal revolution that entails a rethinking of its institutions and the importance of new emerging actors. The most pressing issue is the reform of the Security Council. Already after the end of the Cold War, US President Bill Clinton proposed a reform to admit Germany and Japan as permanent members, a recognition of the economic importance that the two countries defeated in World War II had achieved up to that point. Today, such co-optation is absolutely unthinkable, as it is considered too Western-oriented. Therefore, a different composition of the Security Council must be considered. In this sense, there are many options: India, Latin America, and, above all, Africa. The African continent will be at the center of the political and social dynamics of the future. China has understood this, but the West has not. Yet, despite its future importance—just consider its membership in the BRICS countries—and its current weight within the organization—where it accounts for more than a quarter of the representation in the General Assembly —Africa does not have a permanent member of the Security Council. There is no shortage of arguments for such admission: Africa has a projected growth rate of four percentage points for 2025, is extremely vulnerable to issues such as climate change, which the United Nations has been addressing for years, and is the scene of political crises and devastating conflicts. All of these are reasons why its voice should be heard more. It is no coincidence that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres essentially supported the demands of African countries last August, citing the arguments mentioned above. In recent years, the African Union has presented its own proposal for reforming the UN Security Council, calling for the admission of two countries as permanent members with veto power and five countries as permanent members without veto power. This is an attempt to address the Achilles’ heel of African demands: ensuring the most balanced representation possible for a politically and culturally diverse continent. The idea is difficult to implement for two reasons. First, it is undeniably difficult to determine who would belong to the first group and who to the second: South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are all countries that could have a permanent seat for political or economic reasons, and the exclusion of even a single one of these countries would pose a serious problem. Moreover, the inclusion of seven countries in the highest body would arouse the jealousy of a large portion of the Assembly’s other members. This would therefore highlight the need for a more comprehensive reform, with the risk of broadening the debate and leading to almost inevitable paralysis, since a complete reform of the United Nations requires the membership of a Latin American country and the other Asian giant, India, in the Security Council.
The political sticking point, however, is different. The five permanent members have no interest in changing an order that suits them so well, especially those who are far less influential today than they were 80 years ago. The United States, under the Biden administration, had expressed openness to a reform that would allow two African countries to join without veto power. However, with the Trump administration taking office, there has been no further development. Regarding the other permanent members, Russia may have an interest in expanding the Security Council to include allied or at least neighboring countries that are not part of the Western bloc, but it is unlikely to be willing to consider these countries as equal candidates.
For this reason, almost everything suggests that Africa, the continent of the future, must currently put some legitimate ambitions aside.
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