The broken promise of 1945: Global South’s rise at the UN, demands a new world (II)

The single thread running through the 81st General Assembly was the demand for a seat—permanent, decisive and unapologetic—at the Security Council. This is not a new demand; it has been voiced from Nehru to Nkrumah, from Nyerere to Mandela. But it has acquired a new and urgent force, because the arithmetic of global power no longer matches the arithmetic of global governance. Africa, with over 1.4 billion people, is the world’s second most populous continent and will soon hold the largest working-age population on earth. Latin America and the Caribbean, with more than 650 million people, are likewise excluded. The Middle East has no permanent voice. The Council remains frozen in 1945, and a body that reflects a dead world cannot govern a living one.

It is worth remembering what the Council actually is. Fifteen members sit around that table. Five hold permanent seats and the veto. The other ten—the non-permanent members—are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, allocated by region, and stripped of any power to block. As of January 2026, Bahrain, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Latvia and Liberia took their seats. In June, Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe were elected to replace them from January 2027. Notice what this means. Zimbabwe and Trinidad and Tobago will sit in the chamber. They will speak. They will vote. But when the decisive moment comes—when a veto is cast, when a resolution dies, when a people are abandoned—their voices will count for nothing. Africa’s only route to the table is through a revolving door that never opens onto permanent power. This is not representation. It is decoration.

The case for reform rests on three pillars. The first is demography. The second is equity: the Council’s decisions are binding on every member state, yet the overwhelming majority have no permanent voice in making them. Why should five nations, representing a shrinking share of humanity and output, decide for all? Why should Africa, which bears the heaviest burden of the conflicts the Council debates, be denied a seat at the table where they are discussed? The third is effectiveness. A Council whose legitimacy has been shredded by failure cannot act decisively. New permanent members from the Global South would bring new perspectives and new energy, and would make it harder for any single power to freeze the world in place. The prize is enormous: a decisive voice in shaping the rules of peace and security; a platform for African-led solutions instead of solutions imposed from outside; a symbol of Africa’s arrival as a co-author of global policy; greater leverage across climate, trade and development finance; and a counterweight to a Council long dominated by the narrow geopolitical interests of the P5.

Is it achievable this time? There is genuine momentum. President Joe Biden told the Assembly that the United States supports expanding the Council to include permanent seats for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean—a significant shift, warmly received across the South. But the devil lives in the details: Washington has not said whether new members would hold the veto, and it is improbable that the existing five would surrender their most prized privilege. Article 108 of the Charter requires any amendment to be approved by two-thirds of the General Assembly, including all five permanent members—meaning any one of the P5 can kill reform by simply withholding support. Russia will resist anything that dilutes its power. China welcomes a greater role for developing countries in principle but is wary of strengthening regional rivals such as India and Japan. Britain and France support reform vaguely and will not diminish themselves. Nor is there consensus among the aspirants: the Group of Four—Brazil, Germany, India and Japan—want new permanent seats for themselves, fiercely opposed by the Uniting for Consensus group led by Italy and Pakistan. The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus demands two permanent African seats with veto power and five non-permanent seats—a demand the P5 will not grant. The realistic path is therefore gradual: first expand the non-permanent category, then create new permanent seats without the veto, and finally—the hardest battle of all—reform the veto itself. The Responsibility to Protect doctrine, endorsed by the General Assembly in 2005 but never implemented, would bar the veto in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity. The veto initiative, which summons the General Assembly whenever a veto is cast, has already proven a useful instrument of accountability.

Yet while the South argues for law, the self-appointed guardian of the “rules-based international order” behaves as a predator. In Venezuela, Washington has since 2015 imposed sanctions aimed not at a government but at a people, devastating the economy and collapsing a health system. The UN Human Rights Council found the measures had a “devastating effect,” contributing to tens of thousands of deaths. The pretext was democracy; the purpose was regime change. And now the mask has fallen entirely. On January 3, 2026, the United States military attacked civilian and military sites in Venezuela, captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in their Caracas home, and flew them to New York to face drug trafficking charges—later supplemented by a new charge of conspiracy to commit torture. Flores, 69, suffered a heart attack in US prison; her plea for house arrest was rejected. This is not law enforcement. This is abduction dressed in legal language, a sovereign head of state seized by foreign soldiers and paraded before a court in Manhattan. If Africa needed proof that the powerful are not bound by the rules they impose on others, Venezuela provides it.

In Haiti, the first nation born of a successful slave revolt has endured a century of American intervention—from the occupation of 1915 to the interventions of the 1990s and 2000s—propped up by corrupt clients and exploited resources. Today gangs control the capital, the government has collapsed, and a small, underfunded Kenyan-led mission struggles to restore order, while the power most responsible for the crisis looks away. In Greenland, a modern American president openly sought to buy a sovereign territory from Denmark—colonial logic in a suit, treating a people and their homeland as real estate. In Iran, the hypocrisy has become lethal. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a military campaign of airstrikes targeting Iran’s leadership and nuclear infrastructure, with the stated aim of inducing regime change. The Iranian Red Crescent reported 555 Iranian deaths in the opening days. Six US service members were killed. Trump did not rule out sending ground troops. This is a war of aggression, launched without Security Council authorisation, in direct violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force. The same power that demands Iran abandon its nuclear programme possesses the largest nuclear arsenal on earth. The same power that lectures the world on international law launched an unprovoked war on a sovereign state. And the same power that condemns others for their ambitions now threatens Cuba.

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in a military operation in Cuba, suggesting that an aircraft carrier returning from Iran could be stationed offshore, where it could “come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say: ‘Thank you very much. We give up’”. He has floated a “friendly takeover of Cuba” and Cuban statehood, treating a sovereign nation of eleven million people as a piece of real estate to be surveyed, acquired, and absorbed. Surveillance and reconnaissance missions near Cuba’s coastline have increased sharply since February. Cuba’s top diplomat has said Havana is actively preparing for Trump to announce an invasion. This is the language of empire, not of law. It is the same logic that drove the colonial conquests of the nineteenth century, and it has no place in the twenty-first.

And in Cuba, the longest embargo in modern history, in place since 1962, has been condemned by the General Assembly annually for more than three decades, most recently by 187 votes to two—the United States and Israel alone. It is economic warfare against a sovereign people, and it must end. The pattern is unmistakable. The United States violates the law while claiming to uphold it, abducts presidents, wages wars, threatens invasions, and treats the Global South as a playground for its ambitions. It is not the only offender, but it is the most powerful, and therefore the most consequential. Its actions have hollowed out the authority of the United Nations, eroded the norms of international law, and built a world where might makes right. The 81st General Assembly sent one clear message in reply: the era of exceptionalism must end, and an era of equal law must begin.