"Article 24 Crises" and Security Council Reform:A Japanese Perspective

• Author: Nobumasa Akiyama
• Position: MPA (Cornell), Associate Professor, School of International and Public Policy, Hitotsubashi University
• Pages: 159-175

Page 159

1. Introduction

On October 17, 2008, Japan was elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Since its accession to the United Nations on December 18, 1956, Japan has served as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for a total of nine terms, and this election marked its tenth election.¹ Japan is the most frequently serving non-permanent member state of the Security Council. On this occasion, JapanPage 160expressed its determination to commit itself to making “proactive and constructive contributions to the work of the Council”to deal with complex challenges such as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).² Furthermore, the Government of Japan explicitly expressed its expectation that its active engagement and contribution to the Council’s work during the two-year term beginning from January 2009 would meet the expectations of the international community and enable Japan to achieve permanent membership in the Security Council.³ Three years after the bitter disappointment of the failure of the Security Council reforms of 2005, expectations for the quest toward permanent membership have re-emerged.

At the same time, it is not appropriate to discuss Security Council reform only in the context of power politics within the United Nations. The quest for reform of the Security Council has derived not from power-hungry motivations of states aspiring for permanent seats. Rather, it is a consequence of real needs for increasing the Security Council’s capacity to adapt to the new security environment and thereby play a fundamental role in the maintenance of international peace and stability–as prescribed in Article 24 of the Charter of the United Nations–in the post-Cold War security environment, where “non-traditional security”issues have become increasingly critical.

Therefore, this paper will argue for the necessity of reform of the Security Council in view of the emerging functions that the Security Council will assume under changing perceptions of threats to international peace and security, and will then review the qualifications of Japan, as a new permanent member, in helping to enable the Security Council to play such new roles. This paper will first provide a rough sketch of the history of Security Council reform and Japan’s endeavors. Second, it will analyze the emerging new international security environment surrounding the Security Council and the so-called “Article 24 Crises,”as well as evolving (quasi-)legislative and judicial functions that the Security Council should adopt and bear in order to meet such new international security challenges. This paper will then re-evaluate the qualifications of Japan for becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and will describe the rationale upon which Japan should base its quest for expansion of permanent seats in the Security Council.

As unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 15, 2008, reform of the Security Council, or expansion of membership of the Security Council, was once again addressed as a priority issue in the reform for a morePage 161effectively functional United Nations.⁴ Despite a gap of interests among member states regarding an increase in the membership of the Security Council, general agreement on reform was reached at the General Assembly. A decision was made to start intergovernmental negotiations on the questions of equitable representation and an increase in the membership of the Security Council, which had been repeatedly recognized as issues in various past resolutions.⁵ This section provides an overview of the background against which the need for Security Council reform has grown, as well as past proposals for reform and their consequences.1.

2. “Article 24 Crises”in the Changing Environment Surrounding the Security Council

As prescribed in Article 24(1) of the Charter of the United Nations, the United Nations members “confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,”and the members of the United Nations are bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.⁶ Recently, the Security Council has come to face difficult situations that pose serious challenges to the capacity of the Security Council to function effectively as a primary organ for the maintenance of international peace and security. The challenges are two-fold: inadequate representativeness, which could negatively affect the legitimacy of decision-making in the Security Council, and the need for unconventional responsive measures against emerging international security crises. Together, these constitute the “Article 24 Crises.”

First, there is an imbalance of representation. Members of the United Nations now hold the perception that the Security Council does not appropriately reflect the principle of geographical representation. As noted above, recent changes in both the international community and the composition of the United Nations are creating a gap between regional representation and the composition of the membership of the Security Council. More equitable representation should be realized as it would increase the legitimacy of Security Council decisions. However, at the same time, reform must be carried out carefully to avoid creating any other discrepancy between democratic participation and operational efficiency.

Second, the Security Council faces the reality of international politics involving conflict situations that are becoming increasingly complex both in terms of theirPage 162characteristics and causes. To deal with such complex crises of international peace and security, the Security Council must take actions while sufficiently taking into account a much wider range of concerns and interests, including social and economic development, human rights, and humanitarian crises, which are traditionally outside of the Security Council’s mandate. In addition, particularly in the area of “prevention,”the handling of catastrophes caused by terrorism or the spread of WMDs is also a relatively new challenge for the Security Council, which has traditionally functioned as an instrument of crisis management. Under such circumstances, structural constraints of the Security Council that prevent it from functioning effectively have become tangible. There is a widening gap between the institutional design of how the Security Council works and the actual decisions and actions needed. Thus, this gap could be developing into an inability of the Security Council to formulate effective responses to crisis situations and deter or prevent further catastrophes.

A Mounting Institutional Stresses in the Security Council

With the end of the Cold War, general agreement has been reached in the UN community on the need for Security Council reform in order to respond to changes in the international environment. As the Security Council has become more actively engaged in the maintenance and even the “making”of peace, there has also been a deterioration of the fiscal situation of the United Nations, and for these reasons, there have been serious discussions in various forums regarding an overhaul of the UN system. The reality of changes in the international community poses both quantitative and qualitative challenges to the legitimacy of the existing composition of the Security Council membership.

In terms of quantitative challenges, growing membership in the United Nations has not been properly reflected in the composition of the Security Council membership. Members and the composition of the Security Council should be subject to “due regard being specially paid… to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.” ⁷ The number of members of the United Nations has grown from the original fifty-one members of 1945 to 192 in 2009. Despite such an expansion in membership, the composition of the Security Council has been revised only once in 1965, at which time there were 117 members of the United Nations, by increasing non-permanent membership from six to nine seats.⁸ In particular, despite increases in African and Asian membership in thePage 163United Nations, these regions are extremely under-represented in the Security Council. It is, in a sense, natural that the United Nations seeks reform of the Security Council in the face of major changes in the composition of its own overall membership.

In 1945, the Security Council was composed of five permanent members and six non-permanent members. The initial regional allotment for the six non-permanent member seats comprised two seats for Latin America and one each for the Middle East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth. As the number of members from Asia and Africa increased, this regional allotment became less meaningful. When four more non-permanent seats were added in 1965 as United Nations membership exceeded 100 nations, the regional allotment was amended as follows: three seats for Africa; two each for Asia, Western Europe and Latin America; and one for Eastern Europe. This corrected, to some degree, the imbalance of geographical representation in non-permanent membership. However, due to the sharp increase in Asian and African members in the United Nations, even this could...