Expanding the UN Security Council won’t make it fairer

As the United Nations turned 80 last month, the familiar refrain of "reform or perish" echoed once again through diplomatic circles. From Tokyo to Brasília, governments are renewing calls to expand the UN Security Council by adding new members to make it "representative of today's realities" and to break the monopoly of the five powers that have ruled since 1945. While the demand sounds fair, expanding the council would not democratise the UN—it would simply multiply vetoes, deepen paralysis, and transform an exclusive club into a larger but equally unaccountable one.

 

 

The argument for expansion rests on moral intuition: why should China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—five victors of an eight-decade-old war—still define global security? New Delhi, now leading the BRICS bloc and lobbying harder than ever for a permanent seat, says global governance must reflect contemporary power shifts. Tokyo, Berlin, and Brasília echo that call. Yet, their campaigns sound less like reform and more like recognition drives—narratives of deservingness wrapped in moral vocabulary. That is a bit like Donald Trump's insistence on getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

 

The veto remains the UN's original sin and a defining compromise. Without it, the great powers would never have joined the organisation; but with it, they can paralyse the UN whenever interests collide. The council already struggles to respond to Gaza, Myanmar, and Ukraine, where vetoes by the United States, China, and Russia have immobilised action. Imagine doubling that number.

 

 

Advocates call expansion "democratisation," but an oligarchic enlargement would hardly fit any definition of democracy. Expanding the permanent membership would merely formalise each region's unofficial—and self-declared—hegemons, allowing them to claim to speak for their neighbours. In South Asia, India's bid alarms its neighbours. In Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt compete for primacy. In Latin America, Brazil's ambitions unsettle Argentina and Mexico. And when Germany argues that it deserves a permanent seat, Italy retorts that it, too, lost the war. Regardless of these rivalries, an expanded elite, with or without vetoes, would move slower, decide less, and legitimise the hierarchies it was meant to resist.

 

 

 

The world is not unrepresented at the UN Security Council. Ten non-permanent seats, distributed among five regional groups and rotated biannually, already give every region a say. Even small (or supposedly far-flung) states such as Nepal, Benin, and Jamaica have served multiple terms on the council with exactly as many votes as France or China. What silences them is not absence but hierarchy, where, although the elected ten can vote, one veto from the unelected five can erase everyone else. Expansion would only enlarge that hierarchy, not dismantle it.

 

 

South Asia's own regional body, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), established on the UN's ideals of equality and cooperation, offers a warning. India's ongoing boycott since 2016 has paralysed SAARC by treating it as an extension of bilateral diplomacy, or, worse, domestic politics. The UN could meet a similar fate if dominated by regional giants—reformed on paper but stagnant in practice.

 

 

The UN's crisis, however, is not numerical but ethical. Too many states defy their principles with impunity. For example, Russia not only cited self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter while invading Ukraine, it also filed the "notification" within 24 hours of the start of hostilities, as required by Article 51. India, a would-be permanent member, on the other hand, did not even fulfil such a requirement when carrying out strikes against Pakistan in May. The problem, therefore, is not that too few sit on the council but that too many disregard what it stands for. Adding seats will not change that behaviour; it will reward it.

 

 

Still, abolishing the veto is as unrealistic as expanding it is unwise. The answer lies in taming it—making it politically unusable except, perhaps, in extraordinary cases. Britain's monarchy offers a useful analogy, where the Crown's powers have been rendered inert by centuries-long conventions. The British Crown today acts only on ministerial or parliamentary advice; authority persists in law but not in exercise. The veto can evolve the same way. The UN Charter need not be rewritten, and Pandora's box need not be opened, as long as political practice can turn power into restraint.

 

 

Every veto should be visible, explainable, and costly. A single veto ought to trigger an emergency session of the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, ensuring that one member's decision cannot silence 192 others. Each vetoing state should be forced to engage in a public, Socratic-style Q&A, so that its contradictions face the threat of exposé and reasoning becomes part of the record, whereby transparency transforms impunity into exposure.

 

 

Permanent members should also adopt the regulation proposed by France and Mexico, pledging not to use the veto in cases involving genocide or mass atrocities. These reforms require no charter amendment, only political will. The UN can add real consequences. For example, states that block humanitarian action lose leadership of peacekeeping committees or major UN posts for a period. Power values prestige more than legality, and when prestige is at risk, restraint follows.

 

 

For small and middle states, these reforms are not abstract ideals but survival mechanisms. The UN is the only forum where a small country in Asia or Africa can speak with the same legal dignity as a superpower. Expanding the council to include more regional giants would only amplify inequality. True multilateralism means accountability, not aristocracy.

 

 

Like every decades-old organisation, the UN, too, needs reform; but not the kind that inflates privilege in the name of progress. It needs conventions that discipline the veto, not expansions that distribute it. Shaming the council into acting responsibly, and strengthening the UN General Assembly's voice, would achieve more than adding new permanent seats ever could.

 

 

The task today is not to add more seats but to make those already seated answer for their choices. Power cannot be shared fairly until it learns to limit itself. Reforming the UN means teaching power, at last, the habit of restraint.

 

 

 

Sanitya Kalika is a Nepalese international lawyer and a Hering Scholar at the University of Oxford.