World leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York have called for reforming the global body’s Security Council. They proposed limiting the veto power of the council’s five permanent members and increasing permanent seat numbers.
The leaders made the call in their speeches on Tuesday.
The UN faces growing criticism amid the prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Particularly, the Security Council is blamed for failing to come up with effective measures — with Russia, the United States and China often exercising their veto powers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that in the last few years, the UN has failed to fulfil its founding mission and has gradually become dysfunctional.
He said international justice cannot be left to the will of the UNSC’s five privileged member states, and “the most dramatic example to that is the war, the massacre that has been going on in Gaza for the last 350 days.”
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said the aggressor is hiding under the cover of the council’s permanent membership, “mocking every one of us with its unrestricted veto power.”
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that excluding Latin America and Africa from the permanent seats of the council is an unacceptable echo of domination practices from the colonial past.
President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone said that nearly 80 years after its creation, the Security Council has been stuck in time. He said its imbalanced composition is unjust and at odds with current realities.