Guterres urged to reform the UN Security Council

The time has come to reform the UN Security Council and the institutions of the Bretton Woods system. This statement was made by Secretary General António Guterres, speaking at a press conference in Hiroshima, where the G7 summit ended.

“The global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unfair,” he said (quote according to Reuters).

Guterres noted that in the situation with COVID-19 and the Ukrainian crisis, the system failed to fulfill the “function of a global safety net.” He added that the UN Security Council and the institutions of the Bretton Woods system should be brought into line with “the realities of today’s world.”

At the end of April, speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged speed up the reform of the Security Council by increasing the participation in it of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. He noted that “the West is represented too strongly in it,” which undermines the principle of multilateralism.

Then Guterres declaredthat most of the UN Security Council member states recognize that reforms “reflecting the current geopolitical reality would benefit” the organization. Commenting on the situation with the Bretton Woods institutions, the UN Secretary General added that they also “do not reflect the realities of the modern world economy.”