Unending UN Security Council reform process like a Greek tragedy: India

UNITED NATIONS: Likening the unending UN Security Council reform process to a Greek tragedy enacted every year, India has asserted that an "obsolescent" global governance structure cannot be fit for the purpose to address the challenges of peace and security in the 21st century. India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said that "sadly", the story of the 11 years since the start of the Intergovernmental Negotiations ( IGN ) process for Security Council reform, and 40 years since the inscription of the item on the agenda of the General Assembly, "reads more and more like a Sisyphean struggle". The signs that global visions are changing, universal norms are shifting and established rules are altering are evident," Akbaruddin said. The Indian envoy warned that inaction on the part of the international community to urgently complete the UNSC reform process is not without cost. "An obsolescent global governance structure cannot be fit for the purpose to address the challenges of peace and security in the twenty-first century," Akbaruddin said. "Unlike in the case of the mythical boulder that Sisyphus kept rolling up the hill, our collective failure to deliver on the promise of reforming the Security Council has serious implications for not only the continuing relevance of global governance institutions, but for the lives of millions of 'we the people' around the world," he said. Akbaruddin referred to a warning by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the world is breaking apart and the status quo is untenable. He further said that more than 10 years after its start, the IGN has so far been restricted to making repeated statements of known positions, without any genuine effort to narrow differences and discussions have been conducted in a multilateral setting without any text. He stressed that a vast majority of member states are in favour of expansion in permanent and non-permanent categories of membership of the Security Council. Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN Munir Akram, without naming India, opposed the country's candidacy to the Council and cited the situation in Kashmir.