Reaffirmed Commitment to Reforming the Security Council

Mr President

May I join others in congratulating Ambassador Al-Thani of Qatar and

Ambassador Hermann of Denmark on their appointment as Co-

Facilitators of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council

reform. We are grateful to them for taking up this important responsibility

and look forward to working with them in supporting and reinvigorating

this process.

Today, I reaffirm the United Kingdom’s strong commitment to reforming

the Security Council. The world has changed immeasurably since the

Security Council’s establishment in 1946 and its most recent expansion

in 1965. The Council must change too, to better reflect the world as we

find it in the twenty first century, and to better respond to the threats to

international peace and security that confront us.

Our position is well known, and is unchanged. The United Kingdom

supports modest expansion of the Security Council in both permanent

and non-permanent categories.

We support the creation of new permanent seats for India, Germany,

Japan and Brazil, as well as permanent African representation on the

Council.

We also support a modest expansion of the non-permanent category of

membership, taking the Security Council’s total membership to

somewhere in the mid-twenties.

These changes, we believe, would make for a more representative

Security Council, better able to address challenges to international

peace and security by drawing on the perspectives and the expertise of

a wider range of the UN membership.

And, vitally, it is a model for reform that would preserve the Council’s

ability to respond nimbly and decisively to threats around the globe.

Mr President

On the question of the veto, the United Kingdom has long maintained

that disagreement in this area should not prevent progress in other

areas where reform is possible.

For our own part, the United Kingdom has not exercised our right to use

the veto since 1989. As supporters of the Accountability Coherence and

Transparency group Code of Conduct, we remain committed not to vote

against a credible draft resolution on timely and decisive action

preventing or ending a mass atrocity, and we encourage all States,

including other permanent members of the Council, to join with us in this

regard.

Mr President

Before concluding, I will turn briefly to the upcoming Intergovernmental

Negotiations of this session.

We remain fully committed to the Intergovernmental Negotiations

process as a valuable mechanism for Member States to take the

discussion on Security Council reform forwards. We will be engaging

fully in the forthcoming discussions.

Nevertheless, as we have set out a number of times over the years, we

continue to sympathise with those Member States that express concern

and frustration over the lack of progress towards a substantive outcome.

We call for the initiation of text-based negotiations with the aim of

achieving concrete outcomes within a fixed timeframe. And we remain

open to all ideas for moving the process forward at an accelerated rate,

including by formalising and recording the President,

We look forward to working this year towards fulfilling our collective

commitment to “instil new life” in the Security Council reform process.

Thank you.