At G4 meet, Modi walks the talk on UN reform
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosting the G4 summit on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly session in New York on Saturday, India's bid for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, and its longstanding call for reform within the world body, received their most significant boost in many years.
More importantly, India’s leadership role in this initiative points to a transformative moment in the country's foreign policy. It is one of the strongest indications that under an assertive Modi Administration, India is not just an emerging economy with an impressive GDP but also an ascendant power willing to make the effort to shape and influence global processes. And what better place to start (or re-start) the leadership process than with the issue of UN reforms, which affects not just India but every member of the world forumIJ As Mr Modi and his colleagues in the G4 — Japan's Shinzo Abe, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and Germany's Angela Merkel — noted individually and in their joint statement, there has been a lot of talk about reforming the UN, particularly the Security Council, for several years, but almost no concrete action has been taken.
The G4's own efforts, since it was set up in 2004, have only had limited success. At the 2005 World Summit, all the heads of State and Government unanimously called for UN reforms, even highlighting the fact that changes in the Security Council were essential to the overall plan. It was a historic development but the momentum couldn't be sustained. In 2008, the UN's Inter-Governmental Negotiations for comprehensive reform began but it was not until earlier this month, seven years later, that a negotiating text was finalised. On September 14, the text was adopted by consensus by the UNGA. This was a big step forward. It galvanised diplomatic energies in New Delhi and set the stage for Saturday's summit — the first time in 10 years that the leaders of the G4 met specifically to discuss UN reform.
Whether this renewed effort will bring substantial gains anytime soon is anybody's guess. There are some positive indications — for example, the G4’s insistence on a time-bound plan — and it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that a reform resolution may be adopted before the close of the 70th General Assembly in 2016. However, the reforms process will continue to face stiff opposition from the entrenched powers that benefit from the current system.
Even though most of these powers have supported the call for reforms in public, they have repeatedly sought to scuttle the process behind closed doors. For example, just before the reforms text was being finalised, UNSC permanent member China, with the full support of Russia (arguably one of India's strongest partners), sought to tweak the text in a manner that would drown it in unnecessary technicalities. India led the fight-back. It even protested outside the residence of UNGA president Sam Kutesa's residence and eventually convinced him to remove the problematic insertions. All the while, the US, which has publicly supported India's UNSC bid, sat back and watched from the sidelines.