Debate over United Nations Security Council reform has come back, simmering actively once again as the UN prepares for its 81st Session of the General Assembly. It was established in 1945 to keep the world in order after the Second World War. Now, after eight decades, a fundamental challenge confronts the international community, which is to transform a 15-member council into a body that fairly reflects a contemporary world of 193 sovereign states and more than eight billion people.

Although the need for reform is acknowledged, the current Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) process is in a structural impasse. The question of expansion is not if, but how the Security Council should be expanded. A close evaluation reveals that adding new centres of permanent privilege risks worsening institutional and structural deadlock, whereas expanding democratic, elected non-permanent seats offers the only practical path towards genuine equity.

The status quo in the distribution of seats is the legacy of a bygone colonial era. P5 permanent members possess absolute authority, exercised through the individual veto, and the Global South remains underrepresented. There is no proportional representation at the top of global decision-making at all, especially in entire continents and certain........

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