Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 12/2009

UN Security Council Reform. Current Developments

Elisabetta Martini

October 2009

Istituto Affari Internazionali

Abstract

At its founding, the UN had 51 members and the Security Council (SC) consisted of the same five countries that serve as permanent members today, plus six nonpermanent members. In 1963, the number of nonpermanent members was increased to 10. Since then, the overall membership of the UN has nearly quadrupled to 192, but there has been no further expansion of the Security Council. There is general agreement that the Security Council should be enlarged, and that it is time to utilize this “momentum for reform”, but despite this there is no convergence of views on the modality of the reform package, yet.