The G4 nations of India, Japan, Germany and Brazil, meeting in New York on Saturday at the initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have made a strong pitch for UN Security Council reform within a “fixed timeframe”. In a joint statement, the G4 leaders said a “more representative, legitimate and effective Security Council” reflecting the current realities is needed urgently to address global conflicts and crises that have spiralled in recent years.
The leaders expressed their determination to redouble efforts towards securing concrete outcomes during the current 70th session of the General Assembly. In what was only the second G4 summit since the group’s formation in 2004, the meeting was attended by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Stressing that the G4 countries are “legitimate candidates for permanent membership in an expanded and reformed Council”, they pledged to work together with all member-States and accelerate the outreach towards early and meaningful reform of the Council.
Modi, hosting the meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, set the tone by noting that an expanded Security Council has got to accommodate the world’s largest democracies, major locomotives of the world economy and voice from all the major continents.
Such a Security Council will not only carry “greater credibility and legitimacy”, but will also prove to be “more representative and effective” in addressing the challenges of the 21st century, he said.
“Our institutions, approaches, and often mindsets, reflect the wisdom of the century we have left behind, not the century we live in. This is especially true of the United Nations Security Council,” the PM said as he flagged the new concerns of terrorism and climate change, adding that cyber and space are entirely new frontiers and opportunities and challenge.
In their remarks, Abe, Merkel and Rousseff endorsed the collective push at this point of time. Abe called it a “historic, golden opportunity”. Merkel, however, highlighted the need to find allies, noting: “We need to talk to others in order to achieve this goal.”
The G4 leaders welcomed the General Assembly’s recent adoption of text-based negotiations to pursue the Security Council reform, and said that given the urgency, the negotiating process should now be gone about within a fixed timeframe.
They paid tribute to the “dynamic leadership of the President of the 69th General Assembly and the efforts of the Chair of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations in moving the IGN process towards text-based negotiations”.
The statement also pointed out that more member-States now have the capacity and willingness to take on major responsibilities with regard to maintenance of international peace and security.
Modi, in his opening remarks, regretted that despite being the focus of global attention for decades, there has been no progress thus far. “We live in a fundamentally different world from the time the UN was born. The number of Member States has grown four-fold. Threats to peace and security have become more complex, unpredictable and undefined,” Modi said, adding: “We live in a digital age. The global economy is changed, with new engines of growth, more widely dispersed economic power and widening wealth gap.”
While referring to the recent General Assembly decision to commence text-based negotiations on UN reforms, Modi commented: “After decades, we finally see some movement….This is just the first step. We should aim to take this process to its logical conclusion during the 70th session.”