Guterres says law-breaking powers have paralysed the Security Council

Antonio Guterres told a news conference on 16 September that powers which themselves violate international law still sit on the United Nations Security Council, and that this fact has paralysed the body. Reform of the 15-member Council, he said, "must be an absolute priority."

The briefing came days before high-level week of the 81st General Assembly. Guterres had made a similar argument on 14 September at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The New York version was sharper on the veto-holders. "We have geopolitical divides, and in these geopolitical divides, we have powers that themselves violate international law and sit in the Security Council … and that has been paralysing the Security Council," he said.

He tied the institutional point to an economic one. Every day, he said, the share of developed countries in global output shrinks a little and the share of emerging economies grows a little. "The power relations no longer correspond to the realities of the world. So there must be a redistribution of power." The two places where that redistribution has to happen first are the Security Council and the Bretton Woods system, meaning the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

A speech the Assembly has heard before

Calls to enlarge the Council are older than most of the diplomats who will hear them this week. India, Brazil, Germany and Japan have run a campaign for permanent seats for two decades. African states want two. The five permanent members can block any rewrite. Guterres has no vote. What he has is the ability to describe the paralysis in public on the eve of a session that will also deal with Ukraine, Iran, Gaza and Sudan.

On the Middle East he said peace cannot be achieved without resolving the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, called for an end to what he described as gradual annexation in the West Bank, and repeated that a two-state outcome remains the UN position. On finance he said developing countries are raising more money at home and still need cheaper lending, a larger voice at the Fund and the Bank, and workable debt relief.

Why the timing is not empty

BRICS has just met in New Delhi. The U.S. House has just sent President Trump a sanctions bill that uses tariffs against countries that buy Russian oil. The Fund and the Bank still weight votes by a formula written around mid-century quotas. Guterres is pointing at a mismatch that every emerging-economy capital already recites. He is pointing at it in the building whose Board still runs on 1945 shares.

Nothing in Wednesday's remarks creates a drafting group or a conference. The value of the remarks is the sentence about law-breaking members. Secretaries-general usually talk about reform as architecture. Guterres talked about it as a consequence of conduct. That is a harder sentence for the five permanent members to smile through when they take the floor next week. Whether it changes a single vote on enlargement is a different measurement. The measurement this week is whether any of them answers him by name.