Turkiye calls for UN Security Council veto to end: Could it happen?

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Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to lose their veto power, arguing that the current veto system is “unjust” and hinders “global stability and peace”.

The call comes as the UNSC, which has five permanent members and 10 rotating, non-permanent members, remains deadlocked on many issues – from Israel’s war on Gaza to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz.

What is the UNSC veto and who can exercise it?

It is a special power to veto any substantive resolution, granted to the body’s five permanent members – the US, the UK, France, Russia and China.

It means that even if 14 of 15 UNSC members vote in favour of a resolution, just one veto from any of the five permanent members (P5) can tank it.

What has Turkiye called for?

Erdogan has called for a complete overhaul of the UNSC. That includes ending permanent membership of the council and eliminating the veto power.

Laying out his case in a September 22 article published by Bloomberg, Erdogan wrote that the UNSC’s current structure, developed eight decades ago, no longer meets the needs of a changing world and that a single country should not be able to block the wishes of the broader international community.

“Leaving the resolution of global crises to the will of a handful of capitals is no longer compatible with the realities of today’s world,” he wrote.

Erdogan also called for greater powers for the UN General Assembly (UNGA), which he said should elect all UNSC members for set terms. Countries seeking to serve on the council would therefore have to “regain the confidence of the majority of member states through elections”, he said.

Erdogan lobbied for this initiative during his recent address to the UNGA, saying “a system in which the will of more than 190 countries is subject to the whims of five countries is neither fair nor capable of fully establishing trust”.

What would it take for the UNSC to decide to end the veto?

Formally ending the veto would require an amendment to the UN Charter.

Under Article 108, that requires approval by two-thirds of the UNGA and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members. In other words, the P5 would have to sign off on giving up their own veto power.

What is the France-Mexico proposal that is gaining ground?

In 2015, France and Mexico tabled a proposal urging the P5 to suspend their vetoes on resolutions involving mass atrocities, such as genocide and crimes against humanity.

The initiative would rely on a “collective and voluntary agreement” among P5 states.

The initiative has recently gained renewed traction, with 21 states, including P5 member the UK, backing it within the last four months.

That brings the total number of UN members states supporting it to 128, according to the French government, just one short of the number needed to pass a resolution in the UNGA.

While such a resolution would be non-binding, advocates hope it would exert more pressure on P5 states to withhold their votes in emergency situations.

What is most likely to happen?

Any formal effort to abolish P5 members’ veto power is likely to fail, as it would inevitably face resistance from most, if not all, P5 members.

Russia has already responded to the Turkish initiative by saying it believes permanent UNSC members should retain their veto power, though it did say it supports expanding the number of permanent members on the council.

The US and China have previously strongly defended their veto privileges.

Expanding the UNSC, as Russia proposed, is more likely, though that would also come with challenges.

The US and China have both previously said they would support modest increases to the council’s composition, including by adding seats for African nations, none of which hold permanent membership. The UK and France have also backed expansion, including permanent seats for Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, as well as African countries.

But expanding the UNSC would also require an amendment to the UN Charter, which again requires the backing of all P5 states. Getting the P5 to agree on which countries to share their power with – and whether to extend new members the veto power – has long proved difficult.

“The status quo is not really interested in change,” Professor Ibrahim Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister and former Nigerian permanent representative to the UN, told Al Jazeera.

As for the France-Mexico initiative, analysts say its impact would be limited because the commitments are voluntary and non-binding.

Writing in a 2022 article for US publication Lawfare, analysts John Ramming Chappell and Emma Svoboda noted that the France-Mexico initiative and others like it are “couched in voluntary language” and lack consensus “from the most frequent veto-users (Russia, the United States and China)”.

As a result, “the principles advanced in the initiatives remain aspirational”, they wrote.

Who has exercised the veto most in the past?

Historically, Russia (or the Soviet Union prior to 1991) has cast the most vetoes by far, with nearly half of all vetoes ever recorded (163 out of 331).

The US is second, with 95 vetoes – around 28 percent of those cast.

In recent years, the US has vetoed numerous resolutions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including five calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has vetoed three resolutions relating to that conflict.

When have France and the UK exercised the veto?

France and the UK – the two permanent members calling for suspension of the veto in resolutions relating to humanitarian atrocities – have exercised their veto far more sparingly, with a combined 50 vetoes. Neither country has used a veto since 1989 and most of their earlier vetoes were cast alongside the US.

The UK has only been the sole veto on a resolution a handful of times, all related to its former colony Rhodesia, which later became independent as Zimbabwe.

France has only vetoed a resolution on its own twice, once in connection with a territorial dispute with Comoros and the other related to the Indonesian conflict in 1947.

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