In the context of recent intensive discussions on the effectiveness and a reform of the UN, Paris suggests restricting or eliminating the veto right of the permanent members of the UN – Russia, the U.S., China, the U.K., and France – in some cases.
However, Moscow thinks the initiative is reasonless. Vitaly Churkin, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, thinks that the right of veto of the five permanent members is a very important mechanism that makes delegations work on developing consensus decisions. “We see a certain political context here, since there is a lot of subjectivity in the proposal of France. For example, the French say that the UN Secretary-General or the High Commissioner for Human Rights should determine that there are certain processes in a country, which they call mass atrocities. But there is no legal definition like this in international law, we are talking about war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansings,” Churkin says.
According to him, “not only what happens is important, even if some outrages occur, but what is being proposed to address these outrages. Controversy was caused by the situation in Libya. Tragedies occur not only when the right of veto is used, but in many cases, when the right of veto is not used.”
The Permanent Representative thinks that a subjective element is in the impossibility to qualify “mass outrages” clearly.
“If there is a sensible proposal on the struggle against this situation, then why would the permanent members or anyone vote against these proposals? So here, in general, there are a lot of emotions, a lot of populism, but it is one of the key issues of the undermining of the right of veto. And we cannot allow this,” Churkin concluded.
Regarding new permanent members, whether they will have the right of veto, the Russian diplomat says that this is a separate topic. “Now there is still a great debate between the two camps. Some believe that there should be new permanent members of the Security Council, new permanent seats, and some believe that, no, it's better to follow the path of creating a new category of so-called semi-permanent members, influential countries, which will be elected, say, for a longer period than two years and may be re-elected immediately. And there is a very tough dispute around this.
The last 69th session [of the UN General Assembly] took place in a rather tense, trench-partisan struggle between the two camps, which culminated, in general, with an amusing diplomatic solution, which could be difficult for an ordinary person to understand what all of it means. But the decision about the extension of the negotiations was made, and this decision included a reference to a certain document, which was prepared by the coordinator of the negotiations. There are a lot of disputes around this document, because some believe that it should be the basis for negotiations, and some believe that since it is not the states themselves that have made it, but the coordinator, it cannot be the basis for negotiations. And so on and so forth,” Churkin tried to explain the essence of the debates over the problem.
He says that, unfortunately, instead of having a serious discussion about these fundamental differences between supporters of the establishment of permanent categories and another formula, the so-called intermediate formula of Security Council reform, there is a diplomatic 'tug-of-war'. In my opinion, this procedure could last many years. But a historic compromise between these two camps should be achieved. Currently, quite simply, none of these camps will gain 129 votes in the United Nations for its formula to prevail as a result of these negotiations,” the Permanent Representative stated.
