India describes UN Security Council as dysfunctional; says it facing a crisis of legitimacy, credibility

New York, November 8: India on Tuesday while describing the United Nation Security Council as dysfunctional, said it no longer reflected contemporary realities and was facing a crisis of legitimacy and credibility.

 

Notably, Indian Ambassador to the UN Syed Akbaruddin in his address to the plenary meeting of the United Nation General Assembly on the question of equitable representation on an increase in the membership of the Security Council said that there was no greater example of institutional inertia than the inability to translate discussions into a text for negotiations.

He further said that in the absence of long-due reform and expansion of its permanent and non-permanent members, the UN Security Council remains dysfunctional as it no longer reflects contemporary realities and confronts a crisis of legitimacy and credibility.

Akbaruddin said, "When proliferating transnational threats, deepening economic interdependence, worsening environmental degradation - all call for effective multilateral action - we have fallen short of a substantive response on an issue as important as reform of the Security Council.”"This is a sign that the ageing pillars of the established multilateral order are creaking and crumbling all around us, unable to meet the need for change," Akbaruddin added.

The Indian Ambassador to the UN said that this is despite 10 years of so-called intergovernmental negotiations authorized by the General Assembly and the continuous annual consideration of the agenda item here since 1993.

Referring to the agenda of discussion of the UN Security Council reform, the Indian Ambassador said this is indicative of the lack of even incremental change in our approach to issues of importance, oblivious of the pace of change all around. "As multilateral diplomats, we are used to punishing processes, but never has a process itself become a punishment, as in this case," he regretted.

Akbaruddin also noted that if this is the new normal, it does not bode well for multilateralism. “Never have the normative foundations of multilateral cooperation shown up to be weaker than in this instance," he added.

Akbaruddin in the end said if existing multilateral institutions are muddling along holding meetings and issuing reports which are not even minor stabs at improvement at the margins, if the gap is growing between the demand for global governance and the shortage of responses provided by existing multilateral institutions, then one needs to ponder if what "we are witnessing are symptoms of a recession" of multilateralism.