U.K. Joins France on Veto Restraint as Japan Seeks Deletion of Charter’s ‘Enemy State’ Clauses

The news

United Nations, New York. Two UN General Assembly (UNGA) debates exposed one problem: the 1945 Charter barely changes without its permanent members. On September 22, French President Emmanuel Macron revived the French-Mexican initiative of 2015, under which the Security Council’s permanent members — the U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia, the P5 — would voluntarily refrain from using the veto in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and large-scale war crimes. The veto is the power of any one permanent member to block a Council decision by voting against it. In a PARLEY in The Hindu, Amitabh Mattoo, Dean of JNU’s School of International Studies, said France and Mexico announced that 128 states now support the declaration, and that the U.K. has joined France — the first time two permanent members have done so. France calls the veto a “responsibility”, not a “privilege”. Prof. Mattoo separated three questions — use of the veto, accountability for it, and Council reform — and said the initiative addresses only the first, since abolition needs a Charter amendment and the consent of those who would lose the privilege. He cited the Liechtenstein initiative adopted by the UNGA in 2022, under which the Assembly meets within 10 working days of any veto, and the ACT code of conduct, which asks all Council members not to vote against credible action to prevent genocide and war crimes. Swaran Singh traced the idea to French President François Hollande’s 2013 “code of good conduct”, after Chinese and Russian vetoes blocked action on Syria following the Ghouta chemical attack, and noted that “veto” is not a word in the Charter. Separately, The Indian Express reports that on Tuesday Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi asked the UN to remove the Charter’s references to “enemy states”. Article 53(2) defines an enemy state as any state that was an enemy of a signatory in the Second World War, and Article 107 permits action against such states without prior Council approval. The UNGA called the clauses “obsolete” in 1995 and resolved in 2005 to delete them, but deletion needs an amendment ratified by all P5 members, said Manjeev Singh Puri, India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in 2009-12. China calls the clauses a safeguard of the post-war order; Russia says they defeat Japan’s claim to the southern Kurils. The syllabus link is GS2: international institutions, their structure and mandate.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Article 23 fixes the Council’s composition and names its permanent members. Article 23 provides that the Security Council shall consist of fifteen members, five of them permanent — the Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States — and ten non-permanent members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, who are not eligible for immediate re-election. The Council originally had eleven members; the 1963 amendment raised the number to fifteen and came into force in 1965. The People’s Republic of China took the Chinese seat in 1971 under General Assembly resolution 2758, and the Russian Federation succeeded to the Soviet seat in 1991. The text of Article 23 has not been updated to reflect either change.
2. Article 27(3) creates the veto without ever naming it. Under Article 27, each Council member has one vote. Procedural decisions need nine affirmative votes, while decisions on all other matters need nine affirmative votes “including the concurring votes of the permanent members”. This requirement of concurrence is what is called the veto; the Charter never uses the word. By long-standing practice, an abstention by a permanent member is not treated as a veto. A party to a dispute must abstain from voting on decisions under Chapter VI and Article 52(3), a rule that is rarely invoked.
3. Articles 53, 77 and 107 are the “enemy state” clauses. Article 53 requires regional arrangements to obtain Security Council authorisation for enforcement action, except against an enemy state, and Article 53(2) defines an enemy state as any state that was an enemy of a signatory during the Second World War. Article 77 lets territories detached from enemy states be placed under the trusteeship system. Article 107 says nothing in the Charter shall invalidate or preclude action taken against such a state by the governments responsible for that action as a result of the war. The 2005 World Summit Outcome document resolved to delete these references, but no amendment has been adopted.
4. Articles 108 and 109 make the P5 the gatekeepers of any change. Article 108 provides that an amendment comes into force when adopted by two-thirds of the General Assembly and ratified, according to national constitutional processes, by two-thirds of UN members including all the permanent members of the Security Council. Article 109 allows a General Conference to review the Charter, but its recommendations too need the same ratification, including by all five permanent members. The Charter has been amended only a handful of times, all in the 1960s and early 1970s, on the size of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council and on Article 109 itself. This is why every reform effort, from veto restraint to new permanent seats, is ultimately a negotiation with the P5.

Why UPSC loves this

1. UNSC reform is a standing GS2 question with an India angle. The syllabus asks about “important international institutions, agencies and fora — their structure, mandate”. Mains has asked about India’s bid for permanent membership and the obstacles to reform. The veto-restraint debate adds a new dimension: reform of the veto’s use without reform of the Council’s membership.
2. Prelims asks the Charter’s numbers and the reform groupings. Expect questions on the size of the Council, the term of non-permanent members, the voting rule of Article 27 and the amendment procedure of Article 108. The reform groupings — the G4 (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan), the Uniting for Consensus group led by Italy and including Pakistan, and the African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus — are classic statement-based material.
3. The enemy-state clauses are a live example of history shaping the present. The clauses tie Second World War history to present disputes over the Kuril Islands and Japan’s defence build-up. Such history-to-present questions suit both GS1 world history and GS2 international relations, and the 2005 World Summit decision to delete them is a precise, testable fact.

Analysis

1. Voluntary restraint is useful precisely because it asks the least. The French-Mexican declaration does not bind anyone, and its strength, as Prof. Mattoo notes of the ACT code, is moral and political rather than legal. That sounds weak, but it is the only reform that can bypass Article 108, since it needs no ratification by the P5. The U.K.’s signature matters because it makes restraint a norm shared by two permanent members rather than a French idea. The counter-view is that the three members who actually use the veto most in current crises — the U.S., Russia and China — have not joined, so the declaration binds those least likely to block action. Norms, however, change behaviour by raising the political cost of breaking them, and 128 signatories make that cost real.
2. The Liechtenstein route has done more than restraint to make vetoes costly. A veto used to end the discussion; since 2022 it opens a debate in the General Assembly within ten working days. That forces the vetoing member to explain itself before all 193 members, which is the accountability Prof. Mattoo describes. The mechanism does not overturn any veto and cannot compel action. But it moves the argument to a forum where every state has a vote, echoing the 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution that allowed the Assembly to act when the Council is deadlocked. For countries like India that are outside the Council, strengthening the Assembly’s role is a gain in itself.
3. India’s interest in the veto debate is double-edged. India wants permanent membership and, as part of the G4, has argued that new permanent members should in principle have the same rights as the existing ones, while offering not to exercise the veto until a review. A strong norm against using the veto weakens the case for extending it, which helps those who oppose new permanent seats, such as the Uniting for Consensus group. On the other hand, a Council paralysed by vetoes is exactly why its legitimacy is questioned and why reform is needed. India can therefore support accountability measures on principle while keeping the question of new permanent seats separate, as Prof. Mattoo’s three-question distinction suggests.
4. The enemy-state clauses show how obsolete text survives when it is useful to someone. The General Assembly called these clauses obsolete in 1995 and resolved to delete them in 2005, yet they remain because any amendment reopens the Charter. Mr. Puri’s point that the P5 fear further demands such as Council reform explains the paralysis better than any legal argument. China and Russia now find the clauses useful as rhetoric against Japan’s defence build-up and its Kuril claims, which gives them a reason to keep them. The practical legal force of Article 107 is minimal, since Japan and Germany are full UN members bound by the same rules on the use of force. The danger is symbolic: a Charter that still labels today’s members as enemies weakens its own claim to universality.
5. Japan’s push strengthens the G4 but also complicates it. Japan is a G4 partner of India, and its call to delete the clauses was part of a wider appeal for Council reform. A Japan under economic pressure from China’s curbs on rare earth magnets and military drills near its coast has more reason to push reform. But Japan’s campaign sharpens China’s opposition to any Japanese seat, and China’s opposition is fatal under Article 108. India must therefore weigh how closely to link its own bid to partners whom a permanent member is determined to block. The honest assessment is that reform of membership is unlikely soon, while reform of the veto’s use is advancing slowly through voluntary norms.

Administrator's brainstorm