Reforming the United Nations Security Council: Making it more Democratic in the Post-Westphalian Legal Order
The Security Council has sometimes failed to perform its main duty, which is the maintenance of international peace and security. The Council’s responsibilities in this regard have grown as new international challenges have emerged. These challenges include global environmental issues, refugee flows and mass migration across borders, the rapid spread of infectious diseases, civil war that threatens international peace and security, global terrorism, transnational crime and illegal stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The Security Council has thus become the subject of both severe criticism and calls for its structural reform. A variety of reform proposals have been offered by scholars and politicians, almost all of which have focused solely on state-based solutions. The current study considers that reforming the Council through such means would not alter its current state to any significant extent. International law no longer reflects the state-based system of the Westphalian World Order. The international legal order does not involve only nationstates, and state-based systems are not able autonomously to deal with problems such as these in the post-Westphalian era. It is widely acknowledged that there are many non-state actors that could contribute to enhancing the Council’s representativeness, effectiveness and accountability. It is thus concluded that a reform proposal for the Security Council must consider these factors and produce a non-state based solution. It is proposed that the Council must consider granting formal access to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that have, as non-state actors, been active in the international legal order, and that have already made significant contributions to the above-mentioned issues.
UN Reform, Security Council, NGOs, Democracy, International Legal Order
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