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United Nations 2.0

Context: The United Nations was created in 1945 to protect the world from another destructive war and maintain global peace. With time the organisation is losing its shine and needs reforms to remain relevant.

What recent events reinforce the demand?

• The COVID-19 pandemic
  • The pandemic was a weak moment for UN’s multilateralism. It highlighted the UN’s institutional limitations when countries closed their borders, supply chains were interrupted and almost every country was in need of vaccines.

• Ukraine-Russia War
  • UN-led multilateralism has been unable to provide strong mechanisms to prevent wars. With the West boycotting Russia, the veto provision of the UNSC is expected to reach an even more redundant level than in the past.
  • As such, a reformed multilateralism with greater representation could generate deeper regional stakes to prevent wars.

• Assertive China
  • China’s rise, belligerence and aggression which has been on display through its actions in the South China Sea, the Indo-Pacific region, and now increasingly globally, have also underscored the limitations of UN-style multilateralism.
  • China’s growing dominance could lead it to carve its own multilateral matrix circumventing the West, economically and strategically.
  • The international isolation of Russia and Iran as well as increasing the United States’ Taiwan-related steps could usher in these changes more rapidly than expected.
  • China’s control of multilateral organisations, including the UN, for example, the country exerted pressure on the former UN’s human rights chief to stop the release of a report by the UN Human Rights Council on the condition of Uyghurs in China.

• Global issues such as climate change, geopolitical tensions, humanitarian and migratory crises are cross-cutting, implicating the values and interests of nations and necessitate collective attention and action.
• Technological advancement has also impacted the political and socio-economic landscape and inter-state relations.

India’s Role

• Consistent with the changing times, India’s call for reform of the UNSC has grown in the past few years.
• In this regard, Mr. Jaishankar’s hosting of a ministerial meeting of the G4 (Brazil, India, Germany and Japan) holds special significance.
• Another high-level meeting of the Indian delegation with the L.69 Group, on “Reinvigorating Multilateralism and Achieving Comprehensive Reform of the UN Security Council”, will be critical in the planning of the next steps.
  • The L.69 group’s vast membership spread over Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and Small Island Developing States could bring about a wider global consensus on the issue of the UNSC reforms.

• Beyond the UN, the India’s participation in plurilateral meetings of the Quad, IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa), BRICS, India-CARICOM (Caribbean Community) and other trilateral formats, such as India-France-Australia, India-France-the United Arab Emirates and underlines India’s search for new frameworks of global governance, amidst growing frustration with the extant multilateral order.

The world right now is facing environmental, geopolitical, economic turmoil,

gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction even the G20 is in the trap of geopolitical divides. In a splintering world, we need to create reformed and equitable mechanisms of dialogue to heal divides and only by acting as one, we can nurture fragile shoots of hope for a coalition of the world.