UNSC reform is a membership-driven issue, GA President Shahid

President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid has said that the long-pending reform of the Security Council is a membership-driven issue and he will soon appoint facilitators for the negotiating process. In his first press conference, Shahid said that this is a question that has been once again asked many many times and I can understand why it has been asked so many times because the Security Council reform is an issue that has been on the agenda or the plate of the General Assembly for far too long, In 1979, Maldives was one of the countries who initially signed on to a group of 10 countries who initiated the Security Council reform., he said.  The Security Council reform is a membership-driven issue, he said, adding that he intends to appoint facilitators for the Inter Governmental Negotiations (IGN) before the Security Council reform agenda debate, scheduled for November.

India, currently in the Security Council as a non-permanent member for a two-year term, has been at the forefront of the years-long efforts to reform the Council. India has been saying that it rightly deserves a place as a permanent member of the 15-member Council which in its current form does not represent the geo-political realities of the 21st century. The G4 nations of India, Brazil, Germany and Japan have reaffirmed that it is indispensable to reform the Security Council through an expansion in permanent and non-permanent seats to enable the UN organ to better deal with the ever-complex and evolving challenges to the maintenance of international peace and security. As the General Assembly in June decided to roll over the IGN work to the 76th UNGA session, India had asserted that the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on the long-pending Security Council reforms can no longer be used as a smokescreen.