How to Reform the UN Without Amending Its Charter

Paralysis in the UN Security Council is far from new. But the failure of the council to take meaningful action in response to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine has reignited concerns about the ability of the UN to help resolve international crises. The United States’ and Russia’s repeated exercise of the veto power held by them as two of the council’s five permanent members (P5) has prevented the council from responding effectively to these pressing crises. And it has led some to question whether the UN can fulfill its core mission of maintaining international peace and security.

There have been calls for reform to the UN and the P5 veto power for as long as the organization has existed. Yet formal amendment of the UN Charter has proven nearly impossible, because it requires the unanimous consent of the P5. As a result, reform-by-amendment efforts are caught in a vise: the P5 veto paralyzes the council and necessitates reform, but the same P5 countries can prevent the amendments to the charter that would be needed to address that paralysis.

This does not have to mean that the UN is dead in the water. There is an alternative way forward—what we call nonamendment reform. Despite the difficulty of amending the charter, change at the UN has happened in the past through evolving interpretations and understandings of its founding document. Unlike their formal counterparts, nonamendment reforms are not hostage to the P5 veto, and they can be used to respond to global crises when the Security Council is prevented from acting. Today’s advocates of change should learn from the past and channel their efforts toward nonamendment reforms that can enable the UN to meet the challenges of the moment.

The Difficulty of Amending the Charter

The charter provides two methods for amendment: Article 108 governs individual amendments, and Article 109 contemplates a General Conference to review the charter comprehensively. Despite the procedural differences between the two, both require advocates to obtain the unanimous support of the P5.

Given that each of the P5 members has the power to single-handedly defeat a formal amendment—effectively locking in P5 control—the vast majority of efforts at formal reform have failed. The charter has been amended just three times since it entered into force in 1945. The most significant amendment came in 1963, when the number of nonpermanent members of the Security Council expanded from six to ten and the required number of votes for council decisions increased from seven to nine. The amendment succeeded largely due to mounting pressure for greater representation and participation in the council, a product of the wave of new UN member states emerging out of decolonization movements throughout the mid-twentieth century. But this reform left the P5’s veto power untouched.

There have been more calls in recent years for further broadening representation at the Security Council. While a similar expansion of nonpermanent members remains possible, any reform that would dilute or eliminate the P5 veto is unlikely to succeed, given that it is unlikely that all the P5 states would support it.

An Alternative Path: Nonamendment Reform

The repeated failures of formal reform efforts have bred pessimism about the possibility for change in the UN. However, focusing on these failures risks overlooking the ways that the organization has evolved through subtle yet significant changes taking place outside of the amendment process. Nonamendment reform often escapes notice but has nonetheless transformed the UN over the course of its history.

Nonamendment reform refers to change that occurs outside of the formal amendment process through evolving interpretations of the charter, which defines the structure of the organization as well as the authority and capacity of its various organs. Nonamendment reform occurs through the (re)interpretation of the charter to provide a revised understanding that opens up possibilities for transformation.

Nonamendment reform occurs through a four-step process. First, there is a trigger. The trigger can stem from changing conditions on the ground or from a particular crisis or challenge facing the organization. The trigger makes clear that the organization, as it is currently operating, is not fit for purpose and is unable to respond adequately to the present crisis or challenge. The trigger puts the issue on the international agenda and prompts the transformation process to begin.

The second step is a proposal for reform. During this stage, different options for change are explored and debated before a proposal emerges to address the challenge raised by the trigger. If no proposal is made, then the process ends, and no reform takes place. Such a collapse occurred when the UN failed to respond to the grave violations of international law during the Syrian civil war. On the other hand, when a concrete proposal for change emerges, there is an opportunity for transformation.

The third step involves a period of contestation leading to a new, shared interpretation. At this stage, the proposal is discussed and debated, and states try to persuade one another to adopt or reject the proposed reform. When nonamendment reform is successful, this period of contestation results in a new, shared interpretation and understanding of the charter.

Fourth, the new interpretation is consolidated, and potentially extended, through practice over time. During consolidation, practice reaffirms and clarifies the shared interpretation. In this way, the nonamendment reform effectively shifts the interpretation of the charter.

A series of nonamendment reforms have transformed the UN throughout its history, enabling the organization to respond to and remain relevant in the face of global crises. In a law review article forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of International Law, we detail nine episodes of past nonamendment reform, ranging from changes in the voting procedures in the Security Council to the emergence of Chapter VI and Chapter VI “plus” peacekeeping operations to the creation of a range of international courts and tribunals.

Two past reforms—the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution and the 2022 Veto Initiative—have empowered the General Assembly to address the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, even as Russia and the United States have used their veto power to block Security Council action. The Uniting for Peace Resolution, adopted in 1950 in response to Cold War paralysis in the Security Council, provides that if the Security Council fails to exercise its responsibility to maintain international peace and security, the General Assembly may call an emergency special session to consider the matter. While the resolution drew upon existing General Assembly powers granted by the charter, it changed and expanded the understanding of the General Assembly’s subsidiary responsibility to maintain international peace and security. The Veto Initiative, spearheaded by Liechtenstein and adopted by a General Assembly resolution in 2022, built on the Uniting for Peace Resolution. It mandates that whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council, the matter will automatically be referred to the General Assembly, which will meet within ten working days to hold a debate on the situation about which the veto was cast.

These innovations have played an important role in allowing the UN to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the war in Gaza. In response to Security Council vetoes of proposed resolutions to address both wars, the Veto Initiative automatically referred the vetoed resolutions to the General Assembly. In response, the General Assembly has convened, adopted resolutions condemning violations of international law, and generated political will for alternative measures to be undertaken by individual states. In the case of the war in Gaza, the ongoing political pressure produced by the debate in the General Assembly likely played a role in the eventual passage of two Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war.

New Opportunities for Nonamendment Reforms

Advocates for UN reform can draw valuable lessons from this history. Their efforts should shift toward thinking creatively about opportunities to reinterpret authority and responsibilities existing under the charter. Nonamendment reform offers an incremental approach to transformation, relying upon already established reforms that can be further extended to allow the organization to remain agile in the face of a changing international landscape.

The Veto Initiative exemplifies this approach: it does not purport to grant the General Assembly powers that it does not already have under the charter but instead creates a mechanism for the General Assembly to take action, within its preexisting powers, when the Security Council has failed to respond to a threat to international peace and security. The automatic procedural design shifts the default of the organization to action rather than inaction, and it reduces the risk that the response will be held captive to the political pressures of the moment.

There are a number of new nonamendment reforms that could help meet the challenges the UN now faces, several of which we outline in our forthcoming article. One proposal builds directly on the Uniting for Peace Resolution and Veto Initiative: the General Assembly could pass a resolution that would provide that specific, defined consequences would follow when a state is found to have violated the UN Charter by engaging in an unlawful use of force in violation of Article 2(4). The finding could be made by the General Assembly itself or delegated to a competent, quasijudicial expert body. Once a member state is found to have committed a grave violation of the charter, it would automatically lose many of the benefits of membership in the United Nations. The consequences for violation could include suspension from a UN committee, organ, or subsidiary organ; loss of the right to speak at the general debate of the General Assembly or suspension from meetings held on UN grounds; reduction in the number of positions its nationals hold in the UN; loss of funding from UN agencies; or even suspension from membership at the UN altogether. These consequences could be automatically applied all at once or, ideally, escalated over time if the state identified as violating the charter fails to change course.

Whether this proposal wins support or not, the possibility of nonamendment reform demonstrates the power that the organization possesses even in the face of Security Council paralysis. And it shows the immense influence that resides in the General Assembly, which, unlike the Security Council, represents the entire membership of the United Nations.

Nonamendment reform offers nothing less than the prospect that the United Nations could, despite its formal rigidity, respond flexibly to the new and constantly evolving challenges that the world faces now and will face in the future. It shows that the UN can be a place not just for endless debates leading nowhere but for real, productive responses to the many current and emerging threats to international peace and security.

Acknowledgement

This piece draws on the forthcoming law review article, “Crisis and Change at the United Nations: Non-Amendment Reform and Institutional Evolution” in the Michigan Journal of International Law.