African leaders have made a spirited call on the United Nations to grant the continent a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told the General Assembly on the second day of its annual debate that the African continent deserved the right of veto by having a permanent seat on the UN security council.

“To maintain at all costs the status quo is to turn one’s back on the radical changes in the state of the world and at the same time to expose the Council to more mistrust, more defiance and more criticism,” Wade said, hinting that 65 years after its founding the world body remains mired in the legacy of the past monopolized by a few rich nations. Currently the USA, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France are the only five countries with veto powers on the UN Security Council.

All five were victorious allies in the Second World War, part of what Mr. Wade called the legacy of a closed historical period.

He noted that from 51 Member States in 1945 the UN had now grown to 192, yet the Council, “the body intended to reflect the collective will” whose resolutions are legally binding while those of the Assembly are not, had increased its membership only once, in 1965, from 11 to 15.

“Are we prepared to define a new world order within which Africa and the emerging powers will fully play the role which the changing circumstances confer on them?” he asked.

“How indeed can one conceive of a credible role for our organization in world governance while Africa, comprising more than a quarter of its troops and occupying 70 per cent of the Council’s agenda, has no permanent seat on it?

“It is to end this anomaly and right a historical injustice that Senegal has proposed, independent of current reforms that will take time, that our continent be granted a permanent seat with the right of veto.”

“If numerous Council decisions are today questioned and their execution deficient, it is because they are perceived by the great majority of Member States more as the expression of national interests than the transmission of a mandate in the name of the community of nations,” he said.

President Ali Bongo of Gabon also called on the UN to adapt to the changed international context. “At a time when the democratization of world governance is a necessity, I wish to reaffirm from this tribune the aspirations of Africa to full occupy its place in the concert of nations,” he said.

“It seems to me the time has come for Africa not only to have a permanent seat on the Security Council but also to assume the full breadth of its responsibilities as a fully recognized actor on the international scene.”