PREVIEW
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Summit of the Future boosted reforms and delivered some wins for Africa
It bears the hallmarks of a grandiosity guaranteed to rile isolationists gearing up for the fight of their lives in the United States presidential election on 5 November. When the UN decided to organise a Summit for the Future as a preface to the opening of the UN General Assembly on 23 September, it risked proving the Cassandras right with a high risk of the enterprise dissolving into chaos as rival geopolitical interests fight it out (AC Vol 63 No 20, Geopolitical divides take centre stage at the UN).
The best guess scenario was that a year of negotiating the UN’s Pact for the Future line-by-line, mediated by Namibia and Germany, would produce a lowest common denominator agreement which offends no sensibilities and dodges the weightiest questions such as how to reform the UN Security Council, slow climate change or regulate artificial intelligence.
In the end it resulted in neither a bonfire of multilateralism nor terminal blandness. It’s true the final version of the Pact for the Future, signed by 193 member states on 23 September, reads as if every clause was negotiated by several discordant committees. And it probably was.
Behind the tortuous phraseology and diplo-speak, the Pact for the Future makes several important points about the direction that the UN should be taking as it marks its 80th birthday next year. The most important of these is the locus of power in the organisation.
First stop is the reform of the UN Security Council, which has been kicked into the long grass for much for the organisation’s existence. The Pact agreed to fairer representation on the Council for ‘developing countries and small and medium-sized states’. Pact signatories also agreed to discuss limits on the ‘scope and use of the veto’ currently wielded exclusively by the Council’s permanent five members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.
Reform minded
The Pact also commits to hold the representation of African states as a special case, adding that it would support a more active role for the UN General Assembly when the Council fails to act (AC Vol 65 No 18, After African lobbying, the UN wins battle over tax rules). There is no binding requirement on member states to implement any of these commitments. But delegates from all continents said reform of the Council had been pushed up the agenda amid a general acceptance that the 1945 version of the multilateral system required fundamental change.
The Pact will energise the work of the C10 committee which is coordinating ideas for Council reform. It has now been authorised to consolidate what its members consider the most practical ideas into a roadmap for reform. And permanent seats for Africa are near the top of that agenda.
A week before member states voted on the Pact, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield proposed two permanent seats for Africa, and one for a small island state, on the Council but declined to be drawn on whether those members would have veto powers. That is goes some way to meeting the African Union demand for two permanent seats for the continent; but it also wants to retain three rotating non-permanent seats.
Calls for African seats on the Council have also come from China, the European Union, India, Russia, Brazil as well as the G20 of which the AU has permanent membership. The consensus that the African permanent seats are wholly justified derives from the volume of African issues discussed at the Council – as well as the sense that African representation wouldn’t upset the geopolitical balance on the Council.
It would be far easier for the UN to agree on permanent seats for Africa than accept any of the other leading contenders, such as Brazil, Germany, India, Japan or South Korea – all of which would face geopolitical opposition.
‘The P5 can’t exclude Africa but the far bigger issue is what African states use Council membership for – it should unlock strategic reforms in the multilateral system … it’s so much more than a matter of diplomatic inclusivity,’ argues Martin Kimani, Kenya’s former Ambassador to the UN and now director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
‘The key thing is that Africa is winning consensus support for stronger representation – at the G20 and now at the UN Security Council,’ says Kimani. An obvious data point in favour of reform is that the majority of the world – over four billion people – is under 40 and Africa is the world’s youngest but least represented continent.
Change on the Council is a stepping stone to modernising the international system to tackle issues such as peacekeeping, climate change and the sovereign debt crisis. It also brings new responsibilities. Permanent members of the Council must contribute to the peacekeeping budget.
Manoeuvres
Hardened realists at the UN remain sceptical about the pace of reform, given there is no enforcement mechanism and geopolitical rivalries are at their most intense for over three decades. An attempt by Russia and the ‘like-minded group’ to force in some wide-ranging amendments to the Pact early on the penultimate day of the Summit of the Future was a sharp reminder of global realities.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin’s amendment would have watered down the Pact’s language on human rights, nuclear weapons proliferation and recommitment to international law. But the African caucus and Group of 77 developing states, chaired by Adonya Ayebare, Uganda’s Ambassador to the UN, side-stepped the Russian proposal using a tested UN tactic. With their weight of numbers in the UN General Assembly, the Group of 77 was able to assemble a broad consensus not to discuss Russia’s proposed amendment or put it to the vote. So, it was unceremoniously dropped.
That reflected African delegates’ assessment that the Pact’s position on Security Council reform, more resources for the Peacebuilding Commission, and closer coordination between the UN, World Bank and IMF over reform of the international financial institutions were all battles worth fighting. Against the backdrop of diplomatic dysfunction amid intensifying wars in Sudan, Ukraine and the Middle East, Africa missions at the UN calculate the system is still salvageable – even reformable.
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