I became interested in this question a couple of years ago and subsequently had two letters on the subject published in the mainstream press. It struck me then – and still does – as an urgently needed reform, namely: limitation or abolition of the veto power of the ‘Permanent Five’ on the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The veto power should, at minimum, be deprived of its capacity to defeat collective security.
While researching the topic, I was surprised to discover the extent of opposition among UN member states to the veto power enjoyed by the P5 on the Security Council.
This article is intended to stimulate discussion. I would welcome feedback that might help me strengthen it before submitting it to mainstream newspapers as a feature article.
Is the proposal realistic? One of my favourite slogans from the Paris uprising of 1968 was: ‘Be realistic – demand the impossible!’ Yet I do not believe it is impossible to create a United Nations genuinely founded on collective security, one possessing its own international armed force capable of rapid deployment. If it is impossible, then human rights’ lawyer Geoffrey Robertson’s call for a ‘union of democratic states’ might be a practicable alternative.
The principal obstacles are the permanent members that benefit most from the present arrangements – particularly Russia, China and the United States – together with the governments and political forces that defend or excuse their use of the veto.
I remember when protests against the US war in Vietnam consisted of small rallies. They eventually grew into enormous marches involving tens of thousands of people in Australia’s capital cities. Every broad movement begins by raising an issue that has previously been regarded as unrealistic or impossible.
A starting point today would be to build a broad-based campaign demanding reforms to the UN Charter. These should call for a prohibition on the use of the veto in cases involving genocide, mass atrocities or clear acts of aggression; prevention of a party to a conflict from voting on enforcement measures concerning its own conduct; and provision for a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly to override a Security Council veto.
********
The United Nations arose from the failure of the League of Nations, the first great experiment in collective security. The League’s principle was bold – aggression against one member concerned them all – but its machinery was weak. The United States never joined; colonial rule excluded much of humanity; major decisions generally required unanimity; and sanctions or military action depended on governments choosing to act. When they did not, the League could neither stop aggression nor prevent another world war.
The UN’s founders sought broader membership, binding decisions and enforceable peace, but learned the lesson only halfway. Five permanent members received the veto, while the military agreements envisaged by the Charter were never concluded. East Timor shows what decisive UN-authorised action can achieve; Palestine, Sudan, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Syria show the cost of paralysis. The remedy is veto reform and an accountable international force able to act promptly against aggression and mass atrocities.
East Timor and the power to act
East Timor shows what the United Nations can achieve. After a 78.5 per cent vote for independence in the UN-supervised ballot of 30 August 1999, pro-integration militias, backed by elements of Indonesian security forces, unleashed killing, forced displacement and destruction. On 15 September, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1264 under Chapter VII. It authorised the International Force for East Timor, INTERFET, to use all necessary measures to restore peace and security, protect the UN mission and facilitate humanitarian assistance. An Australian-led force began deploying five days later. Violence subsided, displaced people began returning, and INTERFET handed responsibility to the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor, established by Resolution 1272. Timor-Leste became independent in May 2002.
East Timor was a rare success for collective security. It combined lawful authority, regional leadership, international troops, a clear mandate and a political end point. Yet it also exposed the weakness of the system. INTERFET was not a standing UN force and did not deploy automatically. Action depended on unanimous agreement among the permanent members, Indonesian consent, Australian leadership and national contingents assembled after the crisis had already caused enormous suffering. East Timor therefore offers both proof and warning. International force can halt organised violence and protect self-determination, but the present UN can act decisively only when powerful states permit it and a capable government volunteers to carry the burden, as the Australian government did under Prime Minister John Howard. (Australia contributed 5,500 troops – almost half of the total INTERFET). A reformed United Nations should make such capacity permanent, impartial and promptly available.
The need for fundamental reform
The United Nations remains important, but it cannot reliably fulfil its central purpose of maintaining international peace through collective action. The Charter prohibits aggressive war, authorises binding Security Council decisions and envisages economic and military enforcement.[1] Yet the system was never completed. The veto allows any one of five permanent members to prevent action, including when that state or a close ally is involved. The military agreements anticipated by Article 43 were never concluded. The UN consequently possesses extensive legal authority without dependable means of enforcement. Real collective security requires equal rules, representative decisions that no single power can obstruct, and a permanent international capacity able to respond promptly to aggression and mass atrocities. If such changes prove impossible within the present Charter, the longer term aim should be a reconstituted United Nations or a broadly supported successor organisation that preserves the UN’s valuable agencies and accumulated law while correcting its constitutional defects.
The unfinished system of 1945
Under Chapter VII, the Security Council can identify threats to peace, impose sanctions and authorise military action. Articles 43 to 47 envisaged forces designated in advance, immediately available air contingents, agreed command arrangements and a Military Staff Committee.[2] Cold War disagreements between the United States and Soviet Union over force size, contributions, bases, access and command prevented the required agreements. The UN instead became dependent on peacekeeping and temporary coalitions. Peacekeeping can monitor ceasefires and support political settlements with the parties’ consent, but it differs from collective enforcement against an aggressor determined to continue fighting. Coalitions authorised to use force remain controlled by participating governments, producing selective intervention, double standards and suspicion that international law serves powerful states.
When United Nations failure costs lives
The consequences of these weaknesses are measured in human lives. Armed actors, not the United Nations, commit atrocities, so not every death can be attributed to institutional failure. Yet inaction can leave perpetrators free. Three failures recur: vetoes prevent decisions; peacekeepers receive weak mandates and resources; and troops arrive only after governments negotiate contributions while civilians are killed. Rwanda, Srebrenica, Syria and Sudan illustrate failures.
Sudan is the contemporary example. War between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023 and produced mass killing, violence, displacement and hunger. In June 2024, Security Council resolution 2736 demanded that the Rapid Support Forces halt its siege of El Fasher and called for humanitarian access. The demand was not enforced. In November 2024, Russia vetoed a draft calling for a nationwide ceasefire and unhindered aid, although every other Council member supported it.
By 2026, the World Food Programme reported that nine million people had been forced from their homes, nearly 19.5 million faced acute hunger and 825,000 children under five were expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition. The UN remained essential for relief and diplomacy but lacked an independent force able to secure humanitarian corridors, protect threatened communities or compel compliance. Sudan exposes the gap between recognising catastrophe and possessing the means to stop it.
Rwanda demonstrated the cost of retreat in the face of mass murder. During the 1994 genocide, approximately 800,000 people were killed in one hundred days. The UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda had a limited mandate and strength. After ten Belgian peacekeepers were murdered, most of the mission was withdrawn when reinforcement was required. A standing force could not have guaranteed prevention, but units authorised to protect civilians, secure refuge sites and confront organised killing would have offered possibilities that delayed national contributions could not.
Srebrenica revealed the danger of promising protection without the power to deliver it. The Security Council declared the Bosnian enclave a safe area, but the UN force lacked troops, deterrent capacity and support. Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave in July 1995 and murdered more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. The UN should never offer civilians a guarantee that its authorities have not equipped personnel to uphold. A credible mandate requires forces, reinforcement and willingness to act when a protected area is attacked. This means superior military enforcement.
Syria illustrates paralysis through great power conflict. Security Council divisions and vetoes prevented a collective response as the war expanded and atrocities multiplied. The UN Human Rights Office estimated that 306,887 civilians were killed through direct conflict related causes between March 2011 and March 2021 alone. Similar weaknesses have appeared in Myanmar, Yemen, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo: warnings, investigations and humanitarian assistance document suffering, but the international community cannot compel armed actors to stop. These cases do not prove that military intervention is always wise. They prove that an organisation claiming responsibility for international peace requires options between verbal condemnation and improvised war by individual states.
The veto and constitutional change
Russia can obstruct action concerning Ukraine, while the United States can block measures opposed by Israel concerning Palestine. General Assembly procedures such as Uniting for Peace and the automatic debate following a veto increase political accountability, but the Assembly recommends rather than compels.
- Complete veto abolition is the clearest democratic solution.
- If immediate abolition is unattainable, binding restrictions should prohibit vetoes in cases of genocide, mass atrocities and clear aggression; prevent parties to a conflict from voting on enforcement concerning themselves; and permit a General Assembly majority of two-thirds to override it.
Under Article 108, however, Charter amendments require ratification by every permanent member. Reformers must therefore pursue achievable interim changes while building support for reconstitution.
A permanent force capable of rapid deployment
A reformed organisation needs a standing armed force, not promises of troops that governments may withhold when a crisis occurs. It should combine a permanent international headquarters, logistics system and directly recruited core with larger national units committed under binding readiness agreements. It should possess strategic transport, field hospitals, secure communications and prepositioned supplies. An advance formation should deploy within days, with heavier reinforcements arriving within thirty to sixty days. Personnel should swear loyalty to the Charter while serving, train together and operate through an integrated command. Geographically balanced recruitment, instruction in humanitarian law, and strict protection against sexual exploitation and other abuse would be essential. An independent inspector general, prosecutor and claims mechanism must ensure that immunity never becomes impunity.
Palestine and the Gaza force
Security Council resolution 2803 of November 2025 authorised an International Stabilization Force for Gaza within a United States backed plan involving a transitional Board of Peace. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4090881 The ISF is intended to support security, Palestinian policing, humanitarian work, reconstruction, demilitarisation and Israeli withdrawal. It is temporary, confined to Gaza, assembled from national contributions and dependent on political negotiations among participating governments and the parties. A genuine UN force would be directly commanded by the international organisation and, once lawfully deployed with meaningful Palestinian consent, would not be controlled by Israel, Hamas or an outside patron. It would enforce reciprocal obligations: preventing attacks and hostage taking by Palestinian armed organisations, protecting Israeli civilians, stopping unlawful attacks on Palestinians and armed settler violence, supervising Israeli withdrawal and acting against every party attempting to destroy the settlement.
A political settlement for Palestine
Gaza cannot be separated permanently from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, borders, resources and Palestinian self determination. An international force must support Palestinian sovereignty and Israel’s security within a comprehensive political settlement. Otherwise it could become Gaza’s jailer, disarming and containing Palestinians while leaving occupation and dispossession unresolved. A standing UN force would also deploy more quickly than the ISF because its command, transport, equipment and trained personnel would already exist. It would protect civilians, prevent armed parties from overturning an agreed settlement and create space in which legitimate institutions and a just peace could survive.
Some voices in the right direction
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb has proposed a Council with broader permanent representation and no power for any single state to veto a decision; he would also suspend the voting rights of a Council member that violates the Charter. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confronting a war in which the aggressor is itself a permanent member, has argued that the General Assembly should be empowered to override a veto. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has for years expressed the wider democratic objection in the phrase ‘the world is bigger than five’. These proposals differ, but all reject the proposition that the interests of one great power should automatically outweigh the judgement of the rest of the international community.
Other governments have concentrated on restraints that do not require immediate Charter amendment. France and Mexico have promoted a political declaration under which the permanent members would voluntarily refrain from using the veto when genocide, crimes against humanity or large-scale war crimes are occurring. By July 2022 it had been endorsed by 104 states and two UN observers. The Accountability, Coherence and Transparency group has similarly sponsored a code of conduct asking every Council member, permanent or elected, not to vote against credible action intended to prevent or halt mass atrocities. These initiatives cannot legally compel a permanent member, but they establish a clear standard against which every veto can be judged.
The African Union’s position exposes the central question of equality. Its members hold that the veto should ultimately disappear; yet, for as long as it exists, Africa demands two permanent seats carrying the same rights and privileges as the present five. In 2026 the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, reaffirmed that demand as the correction of a historical injustice. The claim is compelling, because Africa cannot remain excluded from permanent representation. But equality should be achieved by democratising authority, not by multiplying national vetoes and creating new sources of paralysis.
These campaigns nevertheless reveal the scale of the obstacle. None of the five permanent members has accepted the legal abolition of its veto. The legitimacy of collective security cannot depend indefinitely upon the consent of those benefiting from its failure.
The UN has advanced international law, decolonisation, human rights, humanitarian relief and peacekeeping. These achievements justify preservation, but not acceptance of paralysis.
No state should be judge in its own cause or possess authority to prevent the world from responding to aggression or atrocity.
The veto should be abolished or deprived of its capacity to defeat collective security. Representation must broaden without multiplying privilege. Law must be matched by an accountable, permanently prepared, rapid deployment, armed force.
Reconstitution must begin now.
Peace must become a practical guarantee, not a promise that disappears whenever a powerful state objects.
