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2005 World Summit Outcome”, the Heads of State and Government of the UN Member States Devoted Two Short Paragraphs to the Question of Security Council Reform

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2005 World Summit Outcome”, the Heads of State and Government of the UN Member States Devoted Two Short Paragraphs to the Question of Security Council Reform International Organizations Law Review 2: 391–402, 2005 ©2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. ON THE BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS THE PROJECT OF A REFORM OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL AFTER THE 2005 WORLD SUMMIT BARDO FASSBENDER Somewhere towards the end of the lengthy “2005 World Summit Outcome”,1 the heads of State and Government of the UN member states devoted two short paragraphs to the question of Security Council reform. In paragraph 153, they “support early reform of the Security Council as an essential element of [the] overall effort to reform the United Nations in order to make it [i.e., the Council] more broadly representative, efficient and transparent and thus to further enhance its effectiveness and the legitimacy and implementation of its decisions”. In addition, the heads of State and Government commit themselves to continuing their efforts “to achieve a decision to this end and request the General Assembly to review progress on the reform set out above by the end of 2005”. In paragraph 154, it is recommended “that the Security Council continue to adapt its working methods so as to increase the involvement of States not members of the Council in its work, as appropriate, enhance its accountability to the membership and increase the transparency of its work”. Although substantial questions of the Council’s membership and working methods had been excluded from the negotiations of the draft outcome document right from the start because of the complexity of the issues involved and, more importantly, severe disagreement among governments, these two meager paragraphs are a deep disappointment, not only to those governments which had worked for years for a reform of the composition and the decision-making process of the Council but also to all those who regard such a reform as an indispensable condition of a viable United Nations of the future. The Summit Outcome only repeats the catchwords which have been around for years: representativeness, efficiency, transparency, effectiveness, legitimacy, accountability – all of which stand for ambitious and partially contradictory concepts that could not be translated into institutional reform in the course of more than ten years. The Associate Professor of Law, Institute of International and European Law, Humboldt University Berlin. 1 UN Doc. A/60/L.1 of 15 Sep. 2005. 392 Bardo Fassbender IOLR 2005 formula of the outcome document is actually less clear than that of the 1995 Declaration on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the UN.2 As regards the future negotiation process, member states did not commit themselves to taking a decision by the end of 2005 as had been requested by the Secretary- General.3 It is unlikely that the General Assembly, when reviewing “progress on the reform (…) by the end of 2005”, will have much work to do. One can only agree with Kofi Annan’s criticism in his address to the 2005 World Summit: “We have not achieved the sweeping and fundamental reform that I and many others believe is required. (…) Security Council reform has, for the moment, eluded us, even though everyone broadly agrees that it is long overdue.”4 Three years ago, the Secretary-General used about the same words,5 which makes it clear that in fact Council reform has not “eluded us for the moment” but has met major obstacles which governments were unable, and partly also unwilling, to remove. The effort failed to create a “momentum” for reform by suggesting that the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the UN would open a special “window of opportunity”. However, this strategy had already failed five years ago, at the Millennium Summit, so that this time the limited power of rhetoric persuasion should not have come as a surprise. I. OBSERVATIONS ON THE COURSE OF THE DEBATE SINCE 1992 The issue of Security Council reform has kept the United Nations busy for more than a decade.6 In December 1992, the General Assembly adopted 2 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������See General Assembly Res. 50/6 of 24 Oct. 1995, para. 14: ���������������������“The Security Council should, inter alia, be expanded and its working methods continue to be reviewed in a way that will further strengthen its capacity and effectiveness, enhance its representative character and improve its working efficiency and transparency.” 3 ��������See also In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all. Report of the Secretary-General. UN Doc. A/59/2005 of 21 March 2005, Annex, para. 8(c)(ii): ����������������������������������������������������������������������������‘I urge Heads of State and Government to: Reform the Security Council (…) by (…) Agreeing to take a decision on this important issue before the summit in September 2005’. 4 See address of the Secretary-General to the 2005 World Summit, 14 Sep. 2005 (UN press release). 5 See Strengthening of the United Nations: An agenda for further change. Report of the Secretary-General. UN Doc. A/57/387 of 9 Sep. 2002, para. 20. 6 ��������������������������������������������������������������������For an analysis of the discussions up until 1998, see B. Fassbender, UN Security Council Reform and the Right of Veto: A Constitutional Perspective (1998), pp. 221-275, and I. Winkelmann, �������������������������������������������������“Bringing the Security Council into a New Era”, 1 Max Planck Yearbook .
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