Need to reform 'anachronistic' UNSC: India

New York: Describing the composition of an unreformed UN Security Council as "anachronistic", India has said the legitimacy of the United Nations itself will be at stake if its most powerful body is not representative of the international community.

"The Security Council is, undoubtedly, one of the most important institutions of global governance. If its legitimacy is in doubt, then so would be the legitimacy of the United Nations. And, in fact, of the notion of global governance itself," Speaker of Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan said here Wednesday.

She was speaking at the second meeting of the Preparatory Committee of the Fourth World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments.

Addressing a session on 'Key challenges to world peace and democracy', Mahajan said the UN Security Council owes its composition to the structure that was set up in 1945.

"Is that composition still representative of the international community? The United Nations then had 51 members. The figure now is 193," she said, adding, the United Nations of 1945 had three African members while today it has 54.

Mahajan further questioned how many permanent members of the Security Council were from Africa and what was being done to bring more legitimacy to the permanent membership of the Council.

"While improvement in working methods, or a code of conduct on use of the veto, are important, can they substitute for reform of the composition? Can improvement in working methods legitimize a structure that is not legitimate? To say that is anachronistic is only an understatement.

"We obviously do not want attention to be diverted away from the substance to what is peripheral," she said.