Heba Aly, coordinator of the UN Charter Reform Coalition, moderating a panel at Geneva’s human rights festival FIFDH on 8 March on the future of the UN, with Tim Slade, the director of the film The Veto on the challenges facing the Security Council. (FIFDH)
ON SOURCE: GENEVA SOLUTIONS
GLOBAL NEWS United Nations INTERVIEW
The end of the UN? Not if the Charter gets a reboot
By Kasmira Jefford
There have been several proposals and ideas to reform the United Nations and its Charter but little consensus on how to do it. Heba Aly, the coordinator of the UN Charter Reform Coalition, argues that the future of the institution now depends on it.
When the United Nations charter was adopted in 1945 in San Francisco, then-US president Harry Truman said: “This charter…will be expanded and improved as time goes on. Changing world conditions will require readjustments.”
Nearly 80 years later, the world has moved on, while the UN’s founding document has stayed put. “It’s like using 1945 technology and never having an upgrade,” Heba Aly tells Geneva Solutions. The Canadian-Egyptian journalist and former chief executive of The New Humanitarian is leading a coalition calling for a general conference to review the UN charter. “An institution that doesn't touch the rules of the game for 80 years will inevitably be out of touch with reality,” she says.
Launched in May 2024 in Nairobi at a civil society conference held in the lead up to the Summit of the Future, the idea has so far garnered the support of Brazil, South Africa, India and Cameroon as well as public officials including former Costa Rican president José María Figueres and Bangladesh’s interim leader and Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus. A UN charter review conference was always meant to be on the cards – Article 109 clearly states that such an event should take place within 10 years of the UN being created –, though it has never happened. Now, saving the UN could depend on it, Aly warns, as multilateralism falters under the assault of major powers – led by the United States – pursuing their national interests at the expense of international cooperation. She tells Geneva Solutions why it’s become imperative to propose new solutions.
The answers have been condensed for clarity.
Geneva Solutions: Would reforming the Charter save the UN?
Heba Aly: I think so, because there are three things happening right now that are creating existential questions. One is the attacks on the UN by those who historically used to be its biggest champions, for example, the United States. The second is the failure of its principal body, the Security Council, to prevent conflict and preserve peace. Thirdly, the UN is not serving the majority of countries around the world. Because of the way power is distributed, it tends to serve the interests of five countries that happen to have permanent seats on the Security Council. And so, in order to save the UN, you need to address those issues. It is hard to imagine reforms that would really get at the heart of the issue without reforming the charter.
Reforming the UN charter shouldn’t be such a radical idea given that it was always meant to be a living document. And yet, to date, it has never had a major overhaul…
There are good reasons for people having concerns about opening up the charter, but ultimately, checking that it is still fit for purpose and reimagining where necessary should be part of the regular governance practices of any institution, no less one of the most important ones in the world. Anyone who's sat on the board of a company would think that's a perfectly normal thing to do, and yet, in our space, we somehow treat it as taboo.
Is the idea gaining momentum?
Yes, absolutely. The Summit of the Future that was held at the UN in September, for all of its faults, was something of a game-changer in this regard because it created a constituency that was thinking about renewing global governance and spawned a whole bunch of other ideas, including this one (reforming the UN charter – ed.).
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have demonstrated the failure of our global security system and, in particular, that the Security Council is failing to ensure peace and security. The permanent members of the Security Council have also been abusing their veto power, in essence, to violate the principles of the charter and, in many cases, to prevent ceasefires. There are clear conflicts of interest at play for the whole world to witness. That's really given impetus to this call for a review.
Discussing the end of the UN would have seemed a little extreme a few months back, but it seems much more plausible today, as you’ve said recently, with Donald Trump dismantling the multilateral system. How real of a threat is the US leaving the UN altogether?
My guess is as good as anyone’s in terms of what this US administration will do. But it is not out of the question, and many are contemplating it as a serious possibility. The US withdrawing from the UN or cutting its funding to the UN does not necessarily mean the end of the UN. I think it does, however, place a very big responsibility on the other countries that want to ensure its survival to come together and make it work – with or without the US. Ultimately, the UN began as a club of countries with a common interest, and there's no reason there can't be the same impetus for a revival of the UN under a new set of terms that are more fair to the broader global population.
How much of UN reform is centred on rethinking Security Council veto?
When people talk about UN reform, they are often referring to the Security Council. Most people are realistic that getting rid of the veto altogether will be quite difficult, but at least putting more constraints on its use would be a good first step. However, it is not only the veto but also expanding the membership of the council – there's no permanent representation for Africa or Latin America. And that’s where almost every country agrees that something needs to change.
That said, that's certainly not the only purpose of reforming the UN Charter. The idea of a general conference that we’re proposing is to say, actually the entire conceptual framework of the UN Charter is no longer fit for purpose, and so it isn't just specific pieces that we need to fix, but rethinking what should underpin our international relations in the 21st century. For example, the charter, from a normative perspective, is very focused on national sovereignty as the key pillar of international relations. Today, we live in an interdependent world in which we need a different way of thinking that is more aligned with the provision of global public goods, the global commons.
What are some other proposals that have gained traction?
Climate is an area where there's a lot of desire for more coherent and less fragmented enforcement mechanisms. As part of a charter reform process, you could introduce what's being called a climate council, or an Earth systems council that would have a similar function to the Security Council but focus on the risks faced by the climate crisis. Similarly, governance of other risks that aren't at all accounted for in the charter, like artificial intelligence, needs to be codified.
Another proposal is strengthening the role of civil society and non-government officials in the United Nations. To that end, one idea is to create a UN Parliamentary Assembly whereby alongside the appointed government officials, you'd have elected representatives that would provide more of a voice of the people, so to speak, in international relations. This would be very similar to what exists in the European Parliament, where you have the executive branch and then the legislative branch.
Many of the ideas that I have shared are drawn from quite a developed proposal by the Global Governance Forum for a draft Second Charter, published in September last year. Ultimately, member states will have to be the ones to decide what this new charter should include.
What are the next steps?
The coalition’s next step is to turn it (invoking article 109 – ed.) into a political strategy to get the necessary support for introducing a resolution at the General Assembly that could garner a two-thirds majority. We're now engaging with governments, explaining this pathway for change to them, walking them through some of the legalities and getting them more comfortable with the idea, with the hope of creating a cross-regional alliance of countries that would support this effort.
We are also cognizant that sometimes you need a bit of public pressure, so there's a whole other piece of work around building a movement around this. At the moment, there are about 30 organisations that are members of the coalition that include Democracy Without Borders and Oxfam.
What incentive is there for the P5 countries that wield the veto power today in the UN system to change the charter?
The permanent five members of the Security Council cannot veto the holding of a general review conference, but they can veto the recommendations made by the conference. The hope is that, at that stage, if you've had a multi-year global conversation with 193 UN members, the stakes and the cost of blocking recommendations become higher.
I think those governments would be strategic to recognise that in an increasingly multipolar world, they don't have the same monopoly on power that they once did and do have to give up some power to keep some power. If they maintain a system that doesn't serve the majority of countries, you will increasingly see countries like Brazil or India going off and doing deals outside of the structure of the UN, and that doesn't serve the big powers.
United Nations Multilateralism Global governance
ON SOURCE: GENEVA SOLUTIONS