L.69 has 30 members, including India and several developing countries from Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean. It is chaired by the dynamic Permanent Representative of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ambassador I. Rhonda King. St Vincent and the Grenadines became the smallest member of the UN to get elected to the UNSC (2020-21), where it left an impressive imprint on the Council’s work.

L.69 has emerged as an unequivocal voice for UNSC reform. It derives its strength from the fact that it has developing country members, ranging from Small Island Developing States to medium-sized countries to large nations such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria.

But equally important, it has many members that do not themselves aspire to be permanent members of the Council, but are deeply committed to reform and, inter alia, the expansion of the Council in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of membership. Even more significantly, L.69 members have withstood poaching from those against reform or the “nay-sayers” and stayed in the group. Such commitment has been critical for L.69’s credibility.

L.69 is quite unlike the G-4 Group or Uniting For Consensus (UFC) Group, since G-4 consists of “aspirants” and UFC consists of “nay-sayers”. For example, in UFC, for India you have naysayer Pakistan, for Brazil you have Mexico, for Germany you have Italy (and others), and for Japan, the Republic of Korea. Outside the UFC, China and Russia are nay-sayers for Council reform.

But the IGN process, after 15 years, is regressing. The naysayers in IGN have stopped any progress by invoking, incorrectly, the need for consensus to take decisions, thereby ensuring that they effectively have a veto on any progress. They have stopped text-based negotiations without which no text can be adopted by UNGA. IGN is now hostage to them. The outside world, demanding reform due to a paralysis of UNSC — the recent example being the conflict in Ukraine — can’t even witness IGN proceedings since they are not open for public viewing, unlike other UN meetings. IGN now serves as a smokescreen for the naysayers.

African nations have always claimed, rightly so, that their historic injustice needs to be corrected, especially since they are now 54 countries and many of the agenda items in the Council are from Africa. The common African position has been outlined in the Ezulwini Consensus (2005) and the Sirte Declaration (1999), which, inter alia, calls for two permanent seats for Africa, which L.69 has strongly supported. But the African Group has been plagued by internal contradictions (readily exploited by the naysayers), which prevent them from taking their common position forward. Many pro-reformists amongst them are not vocal. Their common position has remained only on paper. This year, they even opposed text-based negotiations. Do they only want to keep talking about UNSC reform?

The G4 faces headwinds primarily because of opposition to Germany and Japan by China, Russia, the Republic of Korea and others. India has widely been recognised to have the strongest claim for permanent membership. Among the current five permanent UNSC members, the P-5, France and the United Kingdom (UK) have been vocal in their support for India; China has demurred. However, expressing support to individual candidates is only the next stage after the reform resolution is adopted.

Developed countries, especially from Europe, lament that the P-5 have paralysed the Council through their veto, but show little enthusiasm for pushing IGN to an outcome. They merely tinker with procedures and hold them up triumphantly as reform. The price the developing world pays is heavy. Only 51 members formed the UN in 1945. We now have 193. The worsening decade-old problems in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere stand as mute witness to the impact of vested interests of the P-5 on international peace and security.

In this scenario, if there has to be any movement on Council reform, one has to go outside the IGN process for an outcome. Reform must be done in a formal process, transparently and in an inclusive manner, which IGN is not.

The primary vehicle thus must be L.69. It’s time the L.69 high-level ministerial meeting in September takes the bold step of tabling a draft in the UNGA and start negotiations in earnest. No one can stop L.69 from tabling a draft. Such a move will galvanise the UNSC reform process and bring back sceptics. Naysayers can no more hide behind smokescreens. Let’s focus on the outcome now, not just the process. September 2022 is as good a time as any to start.

TS Tirumurti is former Permanent Representative/ Ambassador of India to the United Nations in New York and President of the Security Council for August 2021The views expressed are personal