United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reform is critical, as it is the core of international legitimacy for the use of force, sanctions, and peacekeeping operations. Yet it reflects a post-World War II power distribution, not a 21st-century one. When emerging powers do not trust the UNSC’s legitimacy, they will gradually ignore it and revert to unilateralism and regional bloc politics, which historically increases the risk of miscalculation and war.
India's economy is now larger than the United Kingdom's. African nations provide 52% of UN peacekeepers. None holds permanent seats on the UNSC. The UNSC’s power rests not on force, but on consent. As non-permanent members' economies develop and they become major geopolitical players, they gain the will and ability to ignore what the UNSC says. This inverts the traditional power dynamic: the veto was designed to prevent the Council from acting against P5 interests, but when excluded, rising powers can simply refuse to enforce decisions they had no voice in shaping; the mechanism fails symmetrically.
A sanctions regime designed without India's input or Brazil's enforcement becomes a resolution on paper; peacekeeping mandates deployed without African decision-makers' consent become missions that troop contributors can refuse. When major powers can ignore what they cannot veto, the veto itself becomes hollow.
The UNSC comprises 5 permanent and 10 non-permanent members. The non-permanent members are elected by regional blocs for a two-year term by the General Assembly. In contrast to the UN General Assembly, they can pass resolutions that are legally binding and, under certain circumstances, can even approve the use of force.
There have been repeated calls to reform the structure of the UNSC and to include countries from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. UN Secretary-General Guterres has even said “Reform of the Security Council is imperative and long overdue.” The need for enlargement has also been recognised in the UN’s recently adopted Pact for the Future.
Since the UN's founding and the 1965 reforms, the number and distribution of non-permanent seats have become outdated. For example, the 26-member Western Europe group and the 53-member Asia-Pacific group each have two elected seats on the council, yet differ significantly in population.
Since it went into effect in 1945, the charter has only undergone two major reforms. The paths to reform set out in Article 108 of the UN Charter involve a vote by the 193 member states in the General Assembly, which must approve the reform by a two-thirds majority. Then the amendment must be ratified by at least two-thirds of the member states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council.
However, throughout history, the UNSC has reformed only when geopolitical legitimacy crises converged with great-power consent. According to Articles 108 and 109 of the UN Charter, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the P5) have the right to veto any changes to the UNSC veto power they themselves possess, and they must consent to any such changes.
The 1963 expansion illustrates this dynamic. UN membership grew from 51 to over 100 states by the early 1960s, yet the Council's composition of five permanent and six non-permanent members remained frozen at 1945 levels. The disproportionality became stark as the 53-member African and Asian bloc held the same number of non-permanent seats as smaller regional groups, while constituting a General Assembly majority. African states were already forming the Organisation of African Unity (1963) and pursuing Pan-African security cooperation outside UN structures.
The P5 faced a choice: blocking expansion would preserve their voting share but risk making the Council irrelevant. Accommodating expansion would dilute their influence but preserve the institution's authority, and with it, their agenda-setting power. The reform preserved P5 veto power and permanent status while adding four non-permanent seats. The General Assembly approved the expansion after ratification by two-thirds of member states, including all five permanent members.
The 1971 China seat transfer followed different mechanics. General Assembly Resolution 2758 recognised the People's Republic of China as the legitimate representative, transferring the seat from the Republic of China (Taiwan). This was not a Charter amendment requiring P5 ratification, but a credentials decision made by a simple GA majority, demonstrating that some changes to Council composition can occur outside the Article 108 amendment process.
The irrelevance risk that drove the 1963 reform is materialising again, but gradually. BRICS has expanded from 6 to 10+ members and is developing alternative payment systems. regional powers increasingly negotiate security issues bilaterally, informing the Council rather than requesting its mandate. UNSC sanctions face partial non-compliance when major economies outside the P5 lack buy-in on their design, rendering enforcement symbolic. The African states, which contribute over half of all peacekeeping troops, have begun refusing missions where they hold no decision-making authority, making compliance transactional rather than automatic. Meanwhile, emerging threats such as climate displacement, pandemic response, and AI governance require coordination from rising powers like India, Brazil, and Indonesia that the current P5 structure cannot provide, pushing states to build parallel mechanisms outside the UN framework. When excluded states pursue security cooperation elsewhere, the Council risks becoming a forum that major powers bypass rather than one they depend on.
Unfortunately, major reform proposals also have to advance the interests of the existing P5 members. The G4 consists of India, Japan, Brazil, and Germany. These four large economic and political powers believe their global weight isn’t reflected in the Council’s composition. As of 2024, according to data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the P5 and G4 collectively represent 8 of the world’s top-10 military spenders and 9 of the world’s 10 highest GDPs by purchasing power parity, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.
India has also proposed no new veto powers initially, as a compromise with new permanent members deferring veto privileges for a transitional period. The G4 seeks six new permanent members: four individual states (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan) and two for Africa (to be chosen by the African states).
Other reform models have included the Ezulwini Consensus by the African Union (AU). The Consensus has proposed adding two permanent seats and five non-permanent seats for African states to the UNSC. The motivation for focusing on Africa is that Africa contributes significantly to UN peacekeeping and is disproportionately affected by UNSC decisions, yet remains underrepresented among the permanent members.
Even in the Global South, there is no consensus on how to add more seats amid infighting and fears of new power structures that could alter regional and global economic orders. Competitions among regional blocs for the allocation of new seats also hinder the passage of proposals. Most prominently, the Uniting for Consensus (also known as the “Coffee Club”) countries are opposed to the potential new permanent members.
For reforms to actually occur, they would need to be viewed by the P5 as preserving their legitimacy rather than diluting their power. The P5 agreed in 1963–65 to increase the number of non-permanent seats in order to avoid a rift between the UN and recently decolonised countries. Each permanent member has publicly supported the principle of UNSC reform and other members' bids for permanent seats, though these statements rarely translate into concrete action.
Some P5 members have pursued incremental reforms in order to restore legitimacy. France has advocated since the mid-2000s for voluntary veto restraint in cases of mass atrocity crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In 2013, a cross-regional group of 27 small and medium-sized states launched the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) initiative, developing a Code of Conduct urging permanent members to refrain from vetoing resolutions addressing mass atrocities. As of 2020, 120 member states support the Code, including two P5 members (France and the UK).
Yet the pattern from 1963 suggests reform becomes possible when the cost of inaction, by states bypassing the Council, exceeds the cost of accommodation. A credible reform deal would likely involve “differentiated permanency,” in which new permanent members would be added without immediate veto power, with a review mechanism after 15–20 years. If the UNSC does not reform, it will lose legitimacy, and if legitimacy is lost, so will relevance. If it loses relevance, great powers lose the only universally recognised crisis-management system. The question is whether the P5 will recognise that threshold before it is crossed.
