India, Brazil and South Africa jointly called comprehensive reforms of the UN Security Council at the IBSA Foreign Ministers’ virtual meeting on September 16, 2020.
The customary meeting of IBSA Foreign Ministers was chaired by Union External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar and attended by his Brazilian counterpart Fabio Marzano and South African Counterpart Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor.
During the meeting, the foreign ministers of the three-nation group- India, Brazil and South Africa adopted a joint statement on the Reform of the UN Security Council, as a common endeavour of the Global South.
Issued a Joint Statement on reform of UNSC. Expressed our collective frustration with the slow progress of reforms in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations. Time has come for substantive negotiations in a formal setting on a single comprehensive text.
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 16, 2020
IBSA Joint Statement: Key Highlights
• The three ministers in their joint statement emphasized on the need for the international community to redouble efforts to achieve tangible progress for accelerated and comprehensive reform of the UN Security Council and expansion of its membership by including representation from emerging and developing countries.
• The joint statement read that the representation, in both the permanent and non-permanent categories, should be for achieving a representative, inclusive, equitable, responsive, and effective UN Security Council.
• Further, the Ministers emphasised that in the view of increasingly complex international challenges, the existing international governance structure is obsolete and is not fit to effectively address present-day peace and security challenges.
• While highlighting that there has been some progress in international efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the UN system, the ministers reiterated that advancing reforms of the Security Council should remain an urgent and key priority.
• The joint statement further read that the failure to reform the Security Council will have serious implications for international peace and security.
• The Ministers added saying that significant and accelerated reform is critical to ensure that the UNSC is more representative, effective and responsive and remains capable of delivering on the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.
• Further, three ministers expressed dissatisfaction on the transparency and frustratingly slow pace of reforms in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations process and insisted that the time has come to move towards a result-oriented process with substantive negotiations based on a single comprehensive text in a formal setting.
Other Details
The IBSA Foreign Ministers also discussed various issues of global significance including peace, security, climate change, countering terrorism, sustainable development, non-proliferation issues, disarmament, South-South Cooperation and multilateral trading system.
The three Ministers also shared their experience on COVID-19 pandemic situation and appreciated the work done by the IBSA Fund for Alleviation of Poverty and Hunger. Brazil and South Africa also congratulate India on its successful election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the term 2021-2022.
What is IBSA? |
| • IBSA is a unique trilateral forum that brings together three of the world's largest democracies, major economies from three different continents that face similar challenges. • All three nations- India, Brazil and South Africa- are developing, pluralistic, multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nations. • The IBSA grouping was set up during a Foreign Ministers meeting in Brasilia in June 2003. It a South-South grouping of like-minded countries that are fully committed to inclusive sustainable development and in pursuit of the well-being for their people and those of the developing world. |
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