UNSC Veto Reform: Should Permanent Membership and Veto Powers Be Reformed?

Why in News?

A proposal at the current UN General Assembly session seeks to regulate the use of the UNSC veto during humanitarian crises and cases of genocide.
It revives the French-Mexican Initiative (2015), which calls on the five permanent members (P5) to voluntarily refrain from using the veto in situations involving:

The initiative seeks voluntary restraint rather than abolition or amendment of the UN Charter.
France and Mexico state that 128 countries now support the declaration, while France and the UK have accepted the principle among the P5.

Use of veto: Whether a P5 member should exercise the veto in a particular crisis.
Accountability: Whether a P5 member should explain and defend a veto after using it.
Structural reform: Whether the UNSC’s membership, categories and decision-making rules should change.
The French-Mexican initiative addresses only veto restraint, leaving the legal veto power intact.
The debate gained momentum after the Syrian crisis, when Chinese and Russian vetoes blocked Security Council action; the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack provided an additional trigger for the proposal.

Requires the UN General Assembly to convene within 10 working days whenever a UNSC veto is cast.
The vetoing state must explain and defend its position before the Assembly.

Calls on all UNSC members, including non-permanent members, to avoid blocking credible action against genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

These mechanisms are primarily political and moral, rather than legally coercive.

Formal abolition would require UN Charter amendment, requiring approval by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of UN members, including all five permanent members.
None of the P5 has proposed eliminating the veto it possesses.
The veto reflects the underlying distribution of global power: major powers are unlikely to accept binding decisions that directly threaten their fundamental interests.
Hence, current reform efforts range across:

A key weakness of voluntary restraint is that a political commitment is not legally binding and does not prevent a P5 member from subsequently using its veto.

The Council’s composition was last expanded in 1965, when non-permanent seats increased from 6 to 10.
Group of Four (G4): India, Brazil, Germany and Japan support each other’s claims for permanent UNSC membership.
L.69 Group: India works with developing countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and small island developing states for expansion of both permanent and non-permanent categories.
India has advocated text-based negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiations process rather than open-ended discussions.
India has served eight terms as a non-permanent UNSC member, most recently in 2021–22.
The central reform challenge is to reconcile sovereign equality with the unequal distribution of political and military power, while making the UNSC more representative, accountable and effective.