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Text-based Negotiations in Full Swing

As recently described by the Center, the Security Council reform process has entered into the phase of text-based intergovernmental negotiations.

On Thursday, June 16th, the negotiations proceeded with the third meeting of the current fifth round. The meeting aimed at getting member states to discuss specific language on the fourth “key issue” (size and working methods of the Council). Many countries seemed to have misunderstood the intention of the Chair, however, and restated their positions rather than making suggestions for specific changes to the document at hand.

Background
Ambassador Zahir Tanin of Afghanistan, the Chair of the negotiations, distributed a letter on May 10th with a summary of position papers sent to him by Member States (link). A number of countries sent him additional feedback and amendments, which he then incorporated into a second letter. This letter contained recommendations such as a model for rotation of seats between non-permanent members; a call for the eventual elimination of the veto; and requests that the Council must deliver more informative reports to the GA.

This led to the first meeting of the fifth round of negotiations on June 2nd, where the intergovernmental negotiations continued with a closed meeting discussing the revised text. The negotiations were described to have proceeded at a moderate pace with the most outstanding achievement being the acceptance to use the text as a basis for the continued negotiations. Some P5 countries seemed ambivalent about the progress but they did not make any formal complains.

The second meeting, held on June 11th, set out to discuss the fifth key issue (relationship between the GA and the Council). The dynamic of the meeting was very similar to that of the third meeting with several countries restating their national positions, while a handful, among them the Benelux countries, some Scandinavian countries, the S5, and South Africa, made specific, constructive suggestions on how to merge language. The UFC countries emphasized that they felt they had compromised a great deal thus far but they failed to present concrete suggestions for moving forward aside from insisting that all issues are interlinked and must be dealt with accordingly. Sierra Leone, on behalf of the African group, said that general principles are more important than twisting language, which, by some, was seen as a sign there is a lack of cohesion within the African group.

The negotiations will continue on June 28th (followed by the last meetings of the fifth round on July 7th and July 12th) and the big question will be where they are left off at the end of the 64th General Assembly. The plan is for Tanin to include feedback from this round of negotiations and produce a second revised paper. If accepted by member states, this paper will serve as a new, and narrowed down, basis for the sixth round of negotiations. If Tanin can steward the process to a place where real and tangible progress seems feasible during the 65th GA, he may be heralded as the savior of the seemingly never-ending story of SC reform, and he may want to stay on as captain of that process. If success seems out of reach, he may step down as another facilitator who failed to untangle the notoriously polarizing and inflexible member states.


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