Africa’s desire to be fully represented in all
decision-making organs of the United Nations (UN), particularly in
the security council, is informed by three factors. First, repairing the
historical injustice of its underrepresentation in global governance. Second,
recognising African contributions in shaping the contemporary world order.
Third, the urgency of securing the legitimacy of the UN in the face of emerging
threats to international peace and security.
At the African Union’s fifth ordinary session held
in Sirte, Libya in 2005, African leaders adopted the Ezulwini consensus.
It expressed Africa’s desire to be fully represented in all
decision-making organs of the UN, particularly in the security council.
Africa’s experience of the UN system over the past 80 years
has been one of misrepresentation and underrepresentation.
The media, academics and global political
actors portray the continent as a basket-case of backward societies that
are always receiving aid, rather than as agents of progress. The continent is
excluded from permanent membership of the security council, and inadequately
represented as non-permanent members.
Africa’s common position on UN reform calls for no
less than two permanent seats, with all the prerogatives and privileges of
permanent membership including the right of veto.
Africa also wants five non-permanent seats.
Reform of the security council is long overdue.
Its structure — five permanent members with veto power and ten
non-permanent elected members serving two-year terms — is outdated. It reflects
the configuration of global power at the end of the second world war.
The security council is the most powerful body of the UN. It
is the primary body responsible for maintaining international peace and
security. Its decisions are binding on UN member states. Africa is the only
region without a permanent seat, despite representing 54 of the 193
members of the UN and 17 percent of the world’s population.
The council faces a credibility crisis because of its
failure to address the biggest conflicts of our time. Expanding
representation and democratising its working methods is essential to ensuring
its legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness in meeting the security
challenges of the future.
Historical injustices
The goal of Africa’s common position is to correct the
“historical injustice” of its lack of representation and recognition. And the
many injustices the continent has endured over the past 500 years.
Over four centuries, the European slave
trade trafficked about 12 million to 15 million Africans across the
Atlantic to produce sugar, coffee, tobacco and cotton for the global capitalist
economy. As the African scholar Adekeye Adebajo argues: "the West’s
industrialisation was thus literally built on the back of African slavery. For
Africa, the slave trade brought about devastating and irrevocable consequences
in the form of depopulation, increased warfare to enslave more people, mass
migration, and ecological damage that exacerbated diseases and food
insecurity."
This sorry history takes us to Berlin in 1884, where
European leaders parcelled out the continent among themselves.
A major consequence was the imposition of colonial states
that divided communities and operated on a logic of extraction and oppression
of their populations. This continues to be felt in the unmanageable governance
systems on the continent that are often incompatible with democracy and the
rule of law.
This has led to intractable violent conflicts. In the 30
years since the end of the cold war in 1991, African conflicts have
dominated the security council agenda. African issues took up nearly 50 percent
of the council’s meetings and 70 percent of its resolutions. Africa is
(permanently) on the menu, but Africans do not have a (permanent) seat at the
table.
Berlin also laid the foundations for the neocolonialism that
continues to define Africa’s economic relations with the rich nations.
Africa loses an estimated US$203 billion a year through illicit
financial flows, profits by multinational corporations and ecological
destruction.
In 1945, world leaders gathered to establish the United
Nations. Of the 51 original member states only four were African: Egypt,
Ethiopia, Liberia and the Union of South Africa. Most of Africa was still under
colonial rule.
Africa’s contribution to the UN
Africa has not been a mere recipient of the UN’s largesse,
but an active contributor to its success.
As more African states gained their independence in the
1960s, they agitated for reform of the security council. They succeeded in its
expansion from 11 to 15 members, in 1965, with the addition of elected
seats for Africa.
The UN’s practice and jurisprudence evolved through the
activism of African states. Milestones include the declaration of apartheid as
a crime against humanity in 1973 and adoption of
the international apartheid convention.
Over the past 60 years Africans have contributed personnel
to UN peacekeeping missions around the world. Four African countries are in
the top 10 contributors of peacekeepers. African countries also took up
the cause of independence for Namibia in the International Court of
Justice. They have also taken leadership in the UN,
including two secretaries general.
The African Union and African regional actors
oversee 10 peace operations. African peace missions have upheld important UN
norms by challenging unconstitutional changes of government.
Within the security council, successive African members have
led informal reforms like:
- sharing
the penholding responsibility on African issues
- promoting
closer relations between the UN and regional organisations
- ensuring
security interventions respond to the needs of people in conflict
situations. African states have long lobbied the council to reduce
poverty and control the flow of small arms as strategies for conflict
prevention.
Ensuring legitimacy of the UN
Finally, reform of the UN is necessary to ensure its
legitimacy in an uncertain future of new and evolving security threats. These
include the climate crisis, novel pandemics and new technologies
like artificial intelligence.
Failure to solve major conflicts in the past decade has
dented the institution’s credibility.
If institutions are perceived to be exclusive and unfair,
members stop cooperating with them.
Looking to the future
The UN turns 100 in 2045. At that point Africa will
have 2.3 billion people, making up 25 percent of the global population.
Young Africans will be the world’s work force and consumer base, fuelling the
global economy. Will the membership of the security council still look like it
does today?
The nature of global threats and the definition of
international security have changed dramatically since 1945. Such threats can
only be resolved by a security council that represents the interests and
perspectives of all humanity.