The United Nations

The UN was designed to work only when the great powers agree, and it has done exactly that. Reform proposals all founder on the same point: those with the veto must consent to diluting it.

This is chapter 43 of the PSIR Optional Notes, from the part on International Relations in the Paper II syllabus. The complete book is a free download.

Structure and powers

The Security Council

Composition: five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and ten non-permanent elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms on an equitable geographical basis, following the 1963 amendment that raised the elected members from six to ten.

Voting under Article 27: procedural matters need nine affirmative votes; all other matters need nine including the concurring votes of the permanent members. The practice, confirmed by the ICJ in the Namibia advisory opinion (1971), is that a voluntary abstention does not constitute a veto. The double veto, using the veto to determine that a question is substantive rather than procedural, is the classic manoeuvre.

The 2023 paper asked for the Council’s structure and functions, so functions must be exact: maintenance of international peace and security; investigation of disputes under Article 34; recommendation of methods of settlement under Chapter VI; determination of the existence of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression under Article 39, and decision on measures under Articles 41 and 42; establishment of peacekeeping operations and subsidiary organs including tribunals; recommendation of the Secretary-General and of admission of new members; and, with the Assembly, election of ICJ judges.

The General Assembly and others

The General Assembly has universal membership and one vote each. Important questions, peace and security recommendations, elections, admission, budget, need a two-thirds majority. Its resolutions are recommendatory, though they contribute to the formation of customary law and its budgetary decisions bind. Uniting for Peace (Resolution 377, November 1950), adopted to circumvent Soviet vetoes during Korea, provides that where the Council fails to exercise its responsibility because of a lack of unanimity, the Assembly may consider the matter immediately and recommend collective measures, including the use of force. It has been invoked in emergency special sessions, most recently over Ukraine.

ECOSOC has fifty-four members and coordinates the economic, social and related work of the UN and its specialised agencies, and consults with non-governmental organisations. The Trusteeship Council suspended operation in 1994 when Palau, the last trust territory, became independent. The Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, whose Article 99 power to bring to the Council’s attention any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security is the office’s one independent political instrument.

The International Court of Justice

Fifteen judges elected for nine-year terms by the General Assembly and Security Council voting separately and concurrently, with a third elected every three years, no two from the same state, and the composition representing the main forms of civilisation and principal legal systems. A party without a national on the bench may appoint an ad hoc judge. The quorum is nine, and decisions are by majority with the President holding a casting vote.

Contentious jurisdiction extends only to states, and rests on consent, expressed by special agreement, by a compromissory clause in a treaty, or by declaration under the optional clause in Article 36(2), which many states including India accept with reservations. Judgments are binding and final on the parties, and Article 94 provides for recourse to the Security Council on non-compliance, which is subject to the veto.

Advisory jurisdiction allows the General Assembly, the Security Council and authorised agencies to request opinions, which are not binding but carry great weight; the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons opinion (1996) and the Wall opinion (2004) are the standard examples.

For India, the Kulbhushan Jadhav case (2019), where the Court found a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and ordered effective review and reconsideration, is the most useful recent instance.

The record

Specialised agencies

Autonomous organisations with their own membership, budgets and governing bodies, brought into relationship with the UN through agreements under Article 63. The principal ones: the ILO (1919, the oldest, with a tripartite structure of governments, employers and workers), FAO, UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank Group and IMF, ICAO, IMO, ITU, UPU, WIPO, WMO, IFAD and UNIDO. Bodies such as UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR and UNCTAD are programmes and funds of the General Assembly, not specialised agencies, and the distinction is worth getting right.

The 2025 paper asked whether reform of the existing WHO is vital for the global health agenda, which is answerable with specifics.

The case for reform. COVID-19 exposed structural weaknesses: the International Health Regulations of 2005 gave the organisation no power to enter a country or verify data independently, and it depended on state notification; declaration of a public health emergency of international concern is binary and was criticised as both late and blunt; roughly four-fifths of funding is voluntary and earmarked by donors, so the organisation cannot set its own priorities; governance by member states makes candid criticism of a member difficult; and vaccine distribution through COVAX did not prevent the inequity that the 2025 question about global health equity implies.

What has been attempted. The Pandemic Agreement negotiated under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution and adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2025, and the 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations introducing a pandemic emergency category and equity provisions on access to countermeasures. The unresolved question in both is pathogen-access and benefit-sharing, on which developing countries insisted that sharing samples must be linked to guaranteed access to the products derived from them.

The alternative view. Creating new institutions fragments a field that already has too many actors, the Global Fund, Gavi, CEPI, the World Bank’s pandemic fund; the WHO’s normative and technical authority is not easily replicated; and its failures were largely failures of member states to fund and to comply. The measured conclusion is that reform of the existing organisation is preferable to replacement, and that the binding constraints are assessed funding and independent verification powers.

Reform

The Security Council

The case: the Council reflects 1945, not the present distribution of power, population or economic weight; Africa and Latin America have no permanent seat; the veto paralyses the Council in exactly the cases that matter most; and its legitimacy deficit encourages states to act outside it.

The proposals and blocs:

• G4 (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan): six new permanent seats, two each for Africa and Asia and one each for Western Europe and Latin America, plus four or five non-permanent seats. The G4 has offered to defer exercising the veto for fifteen years.
• Uniting for Consensus, the Coffee Club (Italy, Pakistan, South Korea, Argentina, Mexico and others): no new permanent members; expand only the elected category, with longer terms and re-election.
• Ezulwini Consensus (African Union): two permanent seats for Africa with the veto, and five non-permanent, with the African Union selecting the occupants.
• L.69 group of developing countries supports expansion in both categories.
• France and Mexico propose voluntary veto restraint in mass-atrocity situations; the ACT group‘s code of conduct makes the same commitment. The General Assembly’s veto initiative of 2022 requires a debate in the Assembly whenever a veto is cast, which imposes a reputational rather than a legal cost.

The obstacle is structural: Charter amendment under Articles 108 and 109 requires ratification by two-thirds of members including all five permanent members, so any of them can block. And the aspirants each face a regional objector, which is why intergovernmental negotiations begun in 2009 have not produced a text.

Beyond the Council

Financing, given persistent arrears and the distortion of earmarked voluntary funding across the system; Secretariat reform on accountability and appointments, including a more transparent process for selecting the Secretary-General; strengthening the Peacebuilding Commission; revitalising the General Assembly; and, most substantively, the Responsibility to Protect framework agreed in 2005, whose invocation over Libya in 2011 and subsequent contestation are treated in Chapter 45.

Read the rest. This chapter is one of 58 in the complete PSIR Optional Notes, covering Paper I and Paper II in full — free to download.