Türkiye’s Communications Directorate holds ‘UN Security Council Reform’ panel in Oslo

By Ahmet Gencturk

ANKARA (AA) – The Turkish Communications Directorate organized the fifth of the panel series, titled United Nations Security Council Reform: A New Approach to Reconstruction of the International Order, in the Norwegian capital city Oslo.

Speaking at the panel, former UN Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland thanked Türkiye for organizing the event and emphasized that no country advocates reform of the UN system as strong as Türkiye, according to a statement by the directorate.

The UN Security Council represents the world order of 1945 and not of 2022, he added.

Underlining that reform proposals should be those that can be accepted by everyone, Egeland said that the reform plan proposed by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2005 could not be implemented due to disagreements between countries.

He added that important countries, including Türkiye, should be at the forefront on the issue of representation in the UN.

Niels Nagelhus Schia of the Norwegian Institute of International Relations underscored that the “imperfect” structure of the UN Security Council is obvious as seen many times.

Commenting on the Liechtenstein Proposal, which stipulates that if a permanent member of the Security Council uses its veto right, it will have to explain his reasons politically before the General Assembly, Schia said that if this proposal is embraced the UN Security Council would become more transparent.

Also delivering a speech at the panel, senior Turkish political scientist at the Marmara University in Istanbul, Gonca Oguz Gok asserted that although the UN is the result of a normative universal consensus on both the global North and the global South, it has been operating, especially since the 1990s, on liberal international order principles that frequently marginalized the voices of the South.

She however noted that it is unlikely that global issues such as climate change and mitigation of pandemic-induced crises will be addressed without multilateral cooperation inside a more powerful UN.

"Multilateralism is definitely in crisis," Gok said, and added that the major international powers and the permanent members of the UN Security Council were slow to take action in the face of various developments.