Often called the “four musketeers” who want to bring about the badly-needed United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reforms, the G4 (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan) recently held a summit meeting in New York to iron out a common strategy to further push these reforms. India, which aspires for a permanent UNSC seat like the other three members, hosted the G4 summit meeting in New York, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi receiving his three other counterparts Brazilian President Dilma Roussef, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told me during a press briefing that the G4 leaders unanimously stressed that a “more representative, legitimate and effective Security Council is needed more than ever before to address the global conflicts and crises, which had spiralled in recent years”.

The UNSC should reflect the realities of the international community in the 21st century, where more member states have the capacity and willingness to take on major responsibilities with regard to maintenance of international peace and security”.

The G4 group has met several times in the past at the foreign minister level but the New York summit was the second such meeting of the G4 leaders since their first meeting in 2004.

The G4 member states, as well as the majority of the UN General Assembly member countries, have lamented that no substantial progress was made after the 2005 World Summit where all the world leaders unanimously voted for an “early reform” of the UNSC as an essential element of the overall effort to reforming the United Nations. The snail-paced reform process has caused the Assembly majority to throw up their hands in sheer exasperation. The G4 summit meeting reminded that the world leaders had placed strong emphasis on pushing the UNSC reform process, given its urgency, within a fixed time frame.

Sam Kutesa, the outgoing President of the 69th General Assembly had also espoused the cause of UN reform and had reminded a number of times during his presidency about the urgency for reforming the world body. The G4 welcomed Kutesa’s text presented in his July 31, 2015, letter and the efforts of the Chair of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) to move the IGN process towards text-based negotiations.

The G4 leaders, who are also closely working with other regional groups such as the African group, the Caricom and the L-69 Group, also want African representation in both the permanent and non-permanent membership in the Security Council; the G4 has stressed the importance of adequate and continuing representation of small and medium sized member states, including the Small Island Developing States (Sids), in an expanded and reformed Council.

Legitimate candidates

Modi has been aggressively courting the Sids in his bid to get broad-based support for the UNSC reforms.

Describing their countries as “legitimate candidates for permanent membership” in an expanded and reformed Council, the G4 also reaffirmed their resolve to continue contributing to the fulfilment of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. The G4 expressed determination to redouble their efforts towards securing concrete outcomes on reforms during the 70th session of the General Assembly, while expressing support for each other’s candidature in the “one-for-all-and-all-for-one” spirit of the “four musketeers”.

The new President of the 70th General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoff, has also been highlighting the importance of UN reforms. However, it remains to be seen how he will navigate through the minefield of obstacles, including the fierce opposition from P5 members who jealously guard their privileges, particularly their veto powers.

The UNSC has become more of an exclusive club than a body that should work towards peace and security in our planet, plagued by declining resources and rising number of wars and conflicts involving, increasingly, barbaric and brutal acts by non-state terrorist actors, causing death, destruction and mass refugee exoduses.

Many of the global crises could have been mitigated or even averted by the UNSC’s timely and judicious action, had one or more P5 members not exercised the veto to stop passage of a particular proposal inimical to its own interests such as arms supplies to a particular country. Syria provides an excellent example of how actions — or rather inactions — by one or two Security Council members can result in human tragedies of untold proportions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after the G4 meeting, did not mince her words when she said that it was not just the G4 but the majority of the UN member states who were not satisfied with the structure and working methods of the Security Council. In order to address the dramatic problems of the world such as terrorism, collapsing states, natural catastrophes and refugee exoduses, the UNSC must be expanded to reflect the realities of today’s world.

Indeed, the world’s biggest democracies were being denied permanent membership because the existing permanent members saw in the UNSC expansion a threat to their exclusiveness. It is time to reform the UNSC whose anachronistic character is irrelevant and incompatible with our modern times. If the five permanent members did not change, history will judge them harshly as mankind’s worst enemies. The G4 should keep up the momentum and aggressively push for UNSC reforms despite facing an uphill task.

Manik Mehta is a commentator on Asian affairs.