UNSC reforms can’t wait any longer: India

Saying that the credibility of the UN Security Council is at stake, India has sought a results-based timeline for reforms in the world organisation’s supreme decision-making body to give it a more equitable representation globally.

‘The exercise of UNSC reforms cannot be seen to be going on till the cows come home!’ India’s acting permanent representative Manjeev Singh Puri told the UN General Assembly on Thursday, participating in a debate on increasing the council’s membership.

‘Recent developments around the world have increasingly put to question not just the representativeness, but also the credibility of the UN Security Council is at stake,’ he said. ‘And the clarion call for change is only growing louder by the day.’

‘All these are important tidings which cannot be ignored in our collective quest to achieve UNSC reforms,’ said Puri, asserting that a results-based time line was needed. He suggested that 2015, marking the 70th anniversary of the UN as well as 10 years following the 2005 World Summit mandating early reforms of the Security Council, ‘will be an important occasion to deliver concrete outcomes on this most pressing subject’.

Presenting ‘a few ‘myth busters’ to set the record straight on some of the key issues that have been raised recently’, the Indian representative said the UN needed to fulfill the mandate from heads of state in 2005 through the Millenium Summit.