India Seeks Drastic Reform of UN as It Nears 80th Anniversary
As the United Nations enters its 80th anniversary in 2025, India has called for pressing reforms to make this global organization more effective in engagement with the complex challenges of the 21st century peace, security, and sustainable development. In India’s view, reform is necessary if the UN remains relevant to a changing fast-evolving world.
Going further into an understanding of pervasive world-wide confrontations in tandem with longstanding problems of the dimension related to economic inequalities and climatic disasters, with even a growing sense of heightened perceived dangers to peace and security, these raise sterner questions of the desirability of improved modalities of global governance. This summer, the high-level 79th session of the General Assembly adopted the “Pact of the Future” in New York in September 2024. Under this package deal, world leaders agreed to a broad range of topics, such as peace and security, climate change, digital cooperation, and human rights.
The world needs a better UN. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also underscored that change is urgent. He said that systems which came into existence during the middle of the 20th century could not find answers to problems for today and tomorrow. Problems of the 21st century need more representative, networked, and efficient mechanisms to resolve them. “We cannot build a future for our grandchildren with systems designed for our grandparents,” said Guterres, while declaring that the UN has to be changed in line with new developments.
This argument lies in the fact that there is a great deal of India, and other countries, clamouring for a fundamental transformation of the UN Security Council. It is archaic and unresponsive to modern-day realities in this current world of geopolitics; it doesn’t have that much more representation of composition over this new world order in five permanent members’ formation at 1945. India has long advocated an enlarged Council, both permanent and nonpermanent, to reflect better the concerns most relevant in the contemporary world. In that regard, New Delhi too has argued its case about why it should be gifted a permanent seat at the “horse-shoe” table of the UN Security Council.
UN Security Council Polarization
This newfound cleavage in the UN Security Council has really served as an enlightenment to the existing calls for change. It was a sorry day when the very body entrusted with taking concrete action when global wars were happening, witnessed such situations around the globe-from the current war on Ukraine to the Israel-Hamas crisis-turned out with its tail between its legs. Members of the security council still find themselves sharply on different sides on vital issues leading to a weakened stand of UN on maintaining world peace.
Guterres notes that most of the mega-problems the world faces today, from climatic change and terrorism to governance in the digital domain, could not have even been imagined when the United Nations was born. According to him, the prevailing arrangement of the United Nations is bound to be revisited so that novel emerging dangers at a global scale could be addressed.
Indian Case for Diplomacy
India has always favored dialogue and diplomacy as an instrument for resolving international differences, amid global conflicts, and during the Summit for the Future of the UN, the “Pact of the Future” being adopted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that global actions must correspond to global ambitions.
He also reminded India of its stand on peace because, in several instances, he met leaders like Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to discuss the possibility of ending conflicts diplomatically. Of course, Modi has been actively involved in the discourse regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, wherein he had taken his time to deliberate with Ukraine and Russia regarding ways to settle peacefully.
Indian Foreign Minister, S Jaishankar has also sought peace and resolution of the conflict very strongly. In his speeches during the session of the UN General Assembly, he has categorically condemned Pakistan’s cross border terrorism policy that indeed needs to be held responsible for encouraging terrorism. He stressed in his UNGA speech that India takes a very strict stand against terrorism and demanded that collective efforts are required to be made on this earth to put an end to this evil.
Pakistan and Security Council
Pakistan will probably use its period out to elaborate in great detail on Kashmir when it takes its seat as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in January 2025. From this rostrum, Pakistan is likely to take the issue to the highest political level, though till now, successive governments here had not made even any half-hearted attempt at all to work for an over-all international consensus for an effort to strive for holding a discussion on the issue of Kashmir at the Security Council. This can internationalize the bilateral conflict with Pakistan because it is a potential ally of China, one of the permanent members of the Security Council.
Multilateralism and Global Reform
In his speech at the UNGA in September, Jaishankar underlined the need for a reformed multilateral system to tackle the present global crises of peace and prosperity. Though it is indeed true that the original debates at the UN were about world peace as a condition for global prosperity, today peace and prosperity are increasingly in danger.
As this call by India gains more mileage, the UN is slowly feeling pressed upon to oblige demands for modern governance and, henceforth, seems to require adaptation of present changes in world global politics that are sweeping and deep to make its existing institutions ready for the challenges of both peace and security and that of sustainable development.
How US Politics Are Implying Challenges to the UN
The second variable to consider is Donald Trump most likely going to be reinstated as president of the United States in 2025. He was pretty vocal and loud during his first term saying how much he hated the UN and also withdrew the United States from many of the UN organizations like the Paris Climate Accord and UN Human Rights Council. He even reduced some of the basic funding facilities for some key UN programs, too. If he comes back in power then how he intends to hold the UN depends upon destiny because he initially criticized how it is managed.
As expected, UN Secretary-General Guterres has been able to engage constructively with any US administration and has been restating the importance of cooperation between the US and UN. The US is actually the largest financial contributor to the UN accounting for 22 percent of its regular budget making their stand on UN reforms absolutely pivotal
Conclusion
The United Nations enters its 80th year with new scrutiny and a new question regarding the relevance and effectiveness of an organization dealing with the world’s most acute challenges. Reform calls loudly for a more inclusive, effective, and representative body that responds to the complexities demanded by the 21st century. India will be a key mover for the reform of the Security Council and an active player in furthering diplomacy and world peace.
The next years will determine whether the UN will make or break; it will undergo the most severe test with regard to interlocking global conflicts, changing climate conditions, and shifts in power that challenge its very basis in a highly interconnected world.
Source: United Nations General Assembly, Indian Ministry of External Affairs