The High Level Panels' proposed recommendations  may appear, at first glance, to offer a significant improvement over the present situation in respect to the make-up and functioning of the UN Security Council; but it perpetuates or exacerbates some of the principal shortcomings of the existing system, fails to address others adequately, and falls far short of meeting the need for fairness and representativeness that global society has a right to expect from that body. To be more specific:

1.  In place of the present unfair and anachronistic two-tier political caste system, with five permanent members, who happened to be on the winning side in World War II, it creates an even more artificial three-tier caste hierarchy of permanent, "semi-permanent" (an oxymoron). and rotating, non-permanent members. Why, 59 years after the conclusion of World War II, should France and the UK retain permanent SC seats? And why should Japan, which has a population greater than those two combined and contributes much more than the two combined to the regular operating budget of the UN be requested to settle for no more than a semi-permanent seat? Notwithstanding its growing regional importance, why might South Africa, with a population of only 45 million, be more entitled to a semi-permanent seat than, say, Mexico, with 101 million, or Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous state, with 211 million?

2. People will see the proposed reconstitution scheme for what it really is, a device for perpetuating the privileges of the presently advantaged powers by the co-optation of an arbitrarily selected second tier of states, with absolutely no resort to any objective set of principles for SC representation.

3.  Since no institution that humans create is permanent, the word "permanent" should have no place in a revised Charter. The now defunct Soviet Union, a "permanent" member according to the original Charter, was replaced by Russia, thanks only to an act of diplomatic legerdemain; but does that mean that the United Kingdom would be replaced by the rump area of England in the event of the not unlikely eventual secession of Scotland and Wales?

4.  While the proposed plan would lead to a significantly more representative SC than the one we have at present, it would still leave too much of the world without effective representation. Many countries in the UN might rather not be represented at all than to be putatively "represented" by a regional neighbor with whom they have enduring hostile relations.

5. The failure of the proposed scheme to address and resolve the problem of the veto is a palpable affront to the very idea of representative democracy and would be a source of continuing resentment among the vast majority of the world's nations. It would compromise the legitimacy of many future UN decisions, preclude reaching urgently needed decisions that are not in the parochial interests of the privileged few, or lead to the framing of ineffectual, least-common denominator resolutions where firm courses of action are called for.

6.  While the emphasis on the SC is understandable, the apparent neglect of the General Assembly is unwarranted; reform of the decision-making procedures of the GA and enhancing its statutory competence are also badly needed.

Comment by Professor Joseph E. Schwartzberg

Read Revitalizing The United Nations- Reform Through Weighted Voting