EDITORIAL: Reiterating Pakistan’s opposition to adding new permanent members to the United Nations Security Council, Islamabad’s UN envoy, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, said in a recent interview that Pakistan, along with members of the ‘Uniting for Consensus’ group and other like-minded countries, has been advocating a reformed Council with greater representation. The demand for reform is widely accepted, but enlarging the privileged permanent category cannot address the Council’s fundamental weaknesses. Instead, it could deepen the very problem reform seeks to resolve: an unequal and often paralysed system of international decision-making.
The Security Council’s central difficulty is not simply that too few countries have permanent seats. Rather, it is that permanent membership has created a structure in which a handful of states enjoy extraordinary influence over matters affecting the entire international community. The veto power of the five permanent members has repeatedly prevented effective action on major conflicts and humanitarian crises. Adding more countries to this privileged club would risk creating more opportunities for deadlock, rather than making the Council more democratic, representative and accountable. As Ambassador Ahmad rightly put it, “adding any new individual permanent members would only aggravate the problem. … The problem cannot be the solution.”
To make the Council more representative, the more logical approach, advocated by the Uniting for Consensus group, is to expand elected membership and introduce medium-term, rotational seats based on periodic elections. Such an arrangement would enable a wider range of countries—particularly developing, middle-sized and regional powers—to contribute to international peace and security without creating another class of permanent privilege. It would also ensure that representation reflects changing geopolitical realities rather than permanently entrenching the power structure established in the aftermath of the Second World War.
There is also a practical concern. Giving permanent seats to a select few additional countries would inevitably leave others dissatisfied. Which states should qualify, and on what basis—population, economic strength, military capability, regional importance or financial contribution to the UN? Any formula would generate competing claims and regional rivalries. In Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular, choosing one country over another could itself become a source of diplomatic tension. Permanent expansion, therefore, risks replacing one problem of representation with another.
A rotational model would be considerably fairer. Countries with the diplomatic capacity and commitment to contribute to peacekeeping, conflict prevention and dispute settlement could earn Council seats through periodic elections. Medium-term elected seats could provide continuity without conferring permanent privilege. Such an arrangement would also encourage member states to strengthen their diplomatic capabilities and contribute constructively to the UN system, rather than compete for an exclusive status that can never realistically be extended to all deserving states. Pakistan’s own experience during its 2025–26 Council term illustrates that countries do not need permanent status to make meaningful contributions to international peace and security.
The Security Council certainly requires reform, but the international community must resist the temptation to reproduce an outdated hierarchy—created by the victors of the Second World War—on a larger scale. Reform should mean broader representation, greater accountability and more democratic participation, not simply expanding the ranks of those enjoying permanent privilege. The answer to an unequal system is not more permanent power, but a fairer system of rotation in which more countries have a meaningful opportunity to serve.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026