What is the point of the UN Security Council?

With the beginning of 2025, Somalia, Pakistan, Panama, Denmark and Greece joined the UN Security Council as non-permanent members, a diplomatic and organisational status that, once again, raises the question of the actual use of this body in ensuring world peace, especially when it conflicts with the interests of the historical “veto” holders?

There is no doubt that an objective answer to this question will make this “non-permanent membership” a mere political and moral presence for such countries, at the heart of an international game run by the superpowers at the expense of other peoples and nations.

We should remember that the formation of the Security Council, stemming from the results of WWII, established the absolute dominance of the victorious powers, at the expense of all the other nations and countries. The UN Charters issued by the body since 1945 remained mere speeches and non-binding moral principles, which can sometimes be used as legal justifications for the international intervention of the US anywhere in the world in defence of its own interests.

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Therefore, before and during its new membership in the Security Council since January 2024, Algeria has been leading an international and continental diplomatic movement to advance the demand to reform the UN executive body, given it is the actual institution that is in the balance of international powers, and without it, all decisions and recommendations remain ink on paper.

In fact, Algeria’s current demand, as well as the demand of the rest of the countries affected by the historical injustice that has continued for 80 years, is not only related to the right and level of representation within the Security Council, because the most important matter is to amend the decision-making mechanism, otherwise there is no point in expanding continental and regional representation. This is because it will remain a formality, given the fact that only 5 members have the exclusive right to object to (veto) everything issued in the name of the Council.

We should not forget that the UN General Assembly, in its current existence, is nothing more than a global parliament, in which discussions and complaints are raised, but it cannot enforce any legal obligation and does not have power to implement its decisions. These decisions remain subject to the position of the Security Council, while the latter’s decisions are also governed by the “veto” power granted only to permanent members.

When we examine the voting mechanism in the Security Council, we find that procedural matters are issued by it with the approval of nine out of the fifteen members, but when it comes to non-procedural matters, the permanent member states must be among those nine votes, and they have the right to object to any decision by using its veto power. This means that we are working with a discriminatory mechanism based on electoral weight, which blatantly contradicts the principle of equality of sovereignty among states.

It is absolutely unacceptable for the dangerous authority of shaping international relations to be held hostage by the interests of five permanent member states, especially the US, as it is the dominant power in the world.

This illogical situation practically gives those countries control over the acceptance of any new member state in the UN (Palestine is an example), suspension of the membership of any other state by preventing or suppressing it or restoring membership rights to the state whose membership had been suspended.

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In addition, these “major powers” have the sole authority to expel any member state that constantly violates the principles of the organisation’s Charter, through the Council’s recommendation to the General Assembly, and vice versa. This benefits the Zionist state, for example, as it receives American protection despite all the crimes against humanity it has committed, as figures indicate that Washington used its veto 114 times, from 1945 to the end of 2023. This includes 80 cases of preventing the condemnation of its ally, Israel, and 34 times against supporting the Palestinian people.

In addition, the Council is responsible for developing plans to regulate armaments across the world and taking the necessary measures to implement the decisions of the International Court of Justice. We are witnessing the clear procrastination in implementing The Hague Court’s rulings against the Israeli occupation’s violations in Gaza.

The conclusion reached after examining these powers and privileges prompts us to assert that the US and its permanent member partners have appointed themselves as judges of the world and are responsible today for violating the principles and objectives of the UN Charter, in contrast to all the statements, resolutions and agreements that give it legitimacy and democracy. The Security Council has become nothing more than a legitimate body of the permanent members’ executive authority, in the face of any opinions or situations that may affect their interests.

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama expressed a dominate elite view regarding the UN by saying that the UN is “perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism and indeed may be the primary mechanism through which that unilateralism will be exercised in the future.” Noam Chomsky commented on that by saying, “When the UN fails to serve as an instrument of American unilateralism on issues of elite concern, it is dismissed.”

Hence emerges the imperative need to develop and reform the UN, and its most important body, the Security Council through a strong international movement, as Algeria currently seeks. This is because the matter concerns the common destiny of the majority of nations, in light of the clear resistance by the major powers and their desire to keep the situation as it is. They go as far as to fight any proposals or projects for reform, as long as the organisation continues to serve the interests of global capitalism, led by the US.

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This article appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 6 January, 2025.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.