hbfrance

Background:In the General Assembly each and every member has an equally counted vote for thier represented country. In the security ccouncil a state that is a permanent memmber renders this equality useless.The UN Charter states that the Security Council, as a primary objective, is to maintain international peace and security. Because of this the security council is one of the most powerful non-governmental powers in the world and has been reformed many times in the past.In 1945 there were 5 permanent members and 5 non permanents. This soon grew to 10 non permanent members and 5 permanent embers and that numberis what remains today.

U.N. Involvement:On March 21, 2005 , the Secretary General of the UN at that time Kofi Annan called on the UN to reach a consensus on expanding the council to 24 members. He gave two alternatives for this concensus, but did not say which proposal he preferred. He did ,in any case, favor making the decision quickly, stating, "This important issue has been discussed for too long. I believe member states should agree to take a decision on it – preferably by consensus, but in any case before the summit – making use of one or other of the options presented in the report of the High-Level Panel". The two options mentioned are referred to as Plan A and Plan B: //Plan A// calls for creating six new permanent members, plus three new nonpermanent members for a total of 24 seats in the council. //Plan B// calls for creating eight new seats in a new class of members, who would serve for four years, subject to renewal, plus one nonpermanent seat, also for a total of 24. There are now 4 prominent new member proposals are the G4 countries which include: Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan. Other proposals include the membership of a Muslim-majority Nation and India.

Solutions: As stated by france and the UK at the summit declaration on march 7th 2008: //"The United Kingdom and France agree that, more than ever, our two countries shall act together, bilaterally, at EU level and at international level, to contribute to shape globalisation, which is the dominant feature of the international economy and has brought new opportunities to business and citizens but also new economic, social, environmental and security challenges. President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown agreed today that the UK and France will intensify cooperation and regular contacts, working together as a partnership of pioneers leading the global response to new international challenges. They approved joint work on a range of initiatives covering international institutions, foreign and defence policy, development, migration, climate change and energy, and global prosperity, including the promotion of practical responses to such challenges."//.

Solutions: Our solution includes making the G4 countries new permanent members and Africa. This was also said at the 2008 summit: "Reform of the UNSC, both its enlargement and the improvement of its working methods, must therefore succeed. We reaffirm the support of our two countries for the candidacies of Germany, Brazil, India and Japan for permanent membership, as well as for permanent representation for Africa on the Council. We regret that negotiations towards this goal remain in deadlock and are therefore ready to consider an intermediate solution. This could include a new category of seats, with a longer term than those of the current elected members and those terms would be renewable; at the end of an initial phase, it could be decided to turn these new types of seats into permanent ones. We will work with all our partners to define the parameters of such a reform. UNSC reform requires a political commitment from the member states at the highest level. We will work in this direction in the coming months with a view to achieving effective reform."

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