Our Current Proposal

UNSC Reform is possible

The Elect The Council proposals for reform of the UN Security Council have been updated and refined in six rounds following consultations as set out in the section on the history of the project. This section presents the current and most recent version of the Elect The Council proposals.

The United Nations Security Council that lies at the heart of the global security architecture was established to maintain international peace and security, but reform has been stuck for decades.

Beyond a nuclear conflagration and the enduring challenge of interstate conflict, future global security challenges include the impact of climate change, the threat of pandemics, dirty bombs, nuclear terrorism and cybercrime.

These risks are exacerbated by the rise of new nationalism with countries such as the USA turning away from multilateralism, eschewing collaboration and accelerating change away from a global system hitherto dominated by the West.

At a time of great power transitions, multipolarity without sufficient multilateralism is a dangerous trend. Without comprehensive change that includes the end of permanent seats and the veto, the Council will fade into irrelevance. Such reform is possible, but requires a very different approach compared to efforts to find a compromise between different negotiating blocks in New York.

Instead, detailed proposals should be agreed upon amongst like-minded states outside of the intergovernmental negotiating (IGN) process and tabled in the General Assembly as a non-negotiable amendment to the Charter of the United Nations. Even then only the threat from key countries to withdraw cooperation from the UN is likely to change things. Version 6 of the Elect The Council proposal presents such a set of proposals to be included in the amendment to the Charter of the UN.