UNITED NATIONS, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 30th Jul, 2026) The UN General Assembly has unanimously decided to “roll over” the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) on Security Council reform into its upcoming 81st session in September, with Pakistan calling the process the “only legitimate forum” to restructure the 15-member body to make it more effective.
“The reform of the Security Council is one of the most consequential institutional undertakings before the United Nations,” Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told the 193-member Assembly.
The General Assembly acted without a vote in deciding to continue the IGN process in the upcoming session, entering its 18th year spanning 17 previous rounds of deadlocked talks.
Full-scale negotiations to reform the Security Council began in the General Assembly in February 2009 on five clusters– the categories of membership, the question of veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Security Council, and working methods of the council and its relationship with the General Assembly.
Despite a general agreement on enlarging the Council, as part of the UN reform process, member states remain sharply divided over the details.
The so-called Group of Four — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan — who seek for themselves permanent seats on the Council have shown no flexibility in their push for expanding the Council by 10 seats, with six additional permanent and four non-permanent members.
On the other hand, the Italy/Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group, which firmly opposes additional permanent members, has proposed a new category of members — not permanent members — with longer duration in terms and a possibility to get re-elected.
The Security Council is currently composed of five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members elected to serve for two years.
In his remarks, the Pakistani envoy underscored that all five clusters are “intrinsically interlinked.” Therefore, he added, the negotiations must continue to be guided by the established principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
“Progress can only be measured by our collective ability to narrow differences and build the broadest possible political acceptance among Member States,” Ambassador Asim Ahmad said.
“Reform that lacks the confidence of the wider membership cannot provide a durable foundation for a more effective and representative Security Council”.
At the outset of his speech, the Pakistani envoy commended the Co-Chairs of IGN process — Ambassador Tareq Albanai of Kuwait and and Ambassador Lise Gregoire-van Haaren of the Netherlands — for their efforts to to stimulate fresh thinking and promote bridge-building through their proposal of “regional fixed term seats”.
“In our understanding, such seats were never proposed as a permanent category,” Ambassador Asim Ahmad emphasized.
“We also find the notion of seats being held ‘in perpetuity’ and carrying the ‘same privileges’ as the current permanent members difficult to reconcile with the principles of sovereign equality, periodic rotation, democratic legitimacy and accountability,” he said.
“Reform should broaden representation and strengthen inclusivity; it should not replace one form of exclusivity with another,” the Pakistani envoy said, with the hope that the Co-Chairs would provide further clarification of their proposal during the next session.
Pakistan, he said, was fully committed to a comprehensive reform of the Security Council that ensures “Reform for All – Privilege for None”.
