A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a third reason that helps explain why we see condemnation from states, but virtually no followup action of any real consequence.
This week, I’m going to look at one part of the system that ensures power remains in the hands of the powerful. A system that, among other things, allows war criminals to continue to walk our streets.
I think it’s important that we understand this:
The post-WWII system was designed and built to do what we are witnessing today. Selective accountability. Hypocrisy. Impunity. A system in which power can shield itself and its allies from consequences.
And it is in urgent need of reform.
There are 193 member states of the United Nations. Fifteen sit on the United Nations Security Council at any one time. Ten are elected. Five are permanent.
The five who are permanent retains a right that none of the other 188 countries in the United Nations possess. And this is the ability to stop the Security Council from taking substantive action.
On 20 November 2024, fourteen members of the Security Council voted for a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
One voted against.
The United States.
The resolution failed.
On 4 June 2025, it happened again.
Fourteen members voted for a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid.
One voted against.
Again, the USA.
Again, the resolution failed.
Fourteen votes did not defeat one.
One defeated fourteen.
Even when it made complete humanitarian sense.
But those outcomes are exactly how the Security Council has been designed to function.
And this is where any serious discussion about the failure of the United Nations has to begin. Because as of right now, as we all see it, the United Nations is literally a mouthpiece if not redundant.
How many times have we asked why the UN cannot stop wars. Why it cannot enforce international law consistently. Why one country is sanctioned while another is protected. Why the Security Council can condemn one military attack but remain silent and paralysed over another.
But before asking why the Security Council behaves as it does, let’s first look at the role of the Security Council in the whole scheme of things.
Who sits on it?
Who chooses them?
Why are some countries elected while others never face election?
And why do five states possess authority unavailable to everyone else?
The answers lead directly back to 1945. Post WWII.
The Security Council. It’s job?
To maintain international peace and security.
Its job is to identify threats to peace, prevent conflicts from escalating, respond when peace is broken, and create the conditions in which conflict cannot continue or easily return.
And it has considerable power to do so.
It can demand ceasefires. It can impose sanctions. It can establish peacekeeping operations. It can order measures intended to prevent further violence. And, when peaceful measures fail, under Chapter VII of the Charter, it can authorise the use of military force.
Have we seen any of these carried out in Gaza? No.
Lebanon maybe? No.
And unlike most General Assembly resolutions, Security Council decisions adopted under its Charter authority can create binding obligations for UN member states.
Under the UN Charter, member states agree to accept and carry out decisions of the Security Council.
In simple terms, the Security Council is given the authority to act when international peace is threatened.
I know. I’ve said the same thing over and over in various ways. I’m just trying to ensure we get it.
Let me say it once more.
UNSC has the power to act.
However! The institution given the greatest power to protect international peace is also structured in a way that five permanent countries can prevent that power from being used.
United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom and France.
This is where much of the UN’s hard power resides.
The Council has fifteen members.
Ten are elected. Five are permanent.
Every year, the UN General Assembly elects five countries to serve two-year terms. The seats are distributed according to geographical groupings intended to provide regional representation. To win a seat, a country must receive a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly members present and voting. After serving its two-year term, an elected member must leave. It cannot immediately be re-elected. Five countries therefore rotate off the Security Council every year and five new countries replace them.
They have no veto.
Then there are the other five.
The United States.
Russia.
China.
The United Kingdom.
France.
They do not stand for election.
They do not serve two-year terms.
They do not rotate off.
They have occupied permanent positions within the Security Council since the creation of the United Nations, with the Soviet seat subsequently continued by the Russian Federation and China’s representation changing governments in 1971.
And each possesses the veto.
So effectively, we are seeing two classes of membership within the institution entrusted with maintaining international peace.
Ten countries must periodically obtain the support of the wider international community for the right to sit on the Council.
Five do not.
Ten eventually have to leave.
Five do not.
Ten can vote.
Five can prevent the Council from acting.
Why?
The Security Council makes more sense once we go back to 1945.
Before the United Nations, there was the League of Nations. It was supposed to prevent another major war. But it failed. The United States never even joined. Japan and Germany eventually walked away. Italy invaded Ethiopia. The League could condemn countries and impose some sanctions, but when powerful states decided to ignore it, there was very little it could actually do.
Then came the Second World War.
When the United Nations was being created from its ruins, there was an obvious problem to solve. There was little point building another organisation to keep the peace if the world’s most powerful countries could simply ignore it, leave it, or refuse to participate in the first place. So they needed the major powers inside.
The problem was that the major powers wanted something in return.
They were not prepared to join an international security system that could make major decisions affecting them without their consent. And this essentially is how we ended up with the five permanent members we have today.
They were among the major Allied powers that emerged from WWII, and they were given permanent seats on the Security Council.
More importantly, they were given the veto.
Smaller countries involved in negotiating the UN Charter could see the problem immediately. What happens if one of these powerful countries is itself responsible for threatening the peace?
The organisation created to stop aggression could be prevented from acting by the very country accused of aggression. Exactly what we’re seeing now.
But the major powers would not give up the veto. They would participate in the new international system, but they would retain the power to stop the Security Council from taking substantive action they opposed.
And the veto is really about power. Not greater wisdom. Not higher morality nor respect for international law than everyone else.
Power.
The world had just emerged from a catastrophic war. The League of Nations had failed. Keeping the major powers inside the new United Nations was considered more important than creating a system in which every country had equal power.
But we are no longer living in 1945. Countries are no longer in absolute ruin as they were. So why are 193 countries still living under a system of international security built around which states were powerful at the end of a war that finished eighty-one years ago?
The United Nations began with 51 member states.
Today it has 193.
Most of Africa remained under colonial rule when the UN was created. So did large parts of Asia and the Caribbean.
Decolonisation transformed the international system. Africa now has 54 UN member states. Not one possesses a permanent Security Council seat. Latin America and the Caribbean have none. The Arab world has none. India, home to roughly one-sixth of humanity, has none.
Yet Britain and France retain permanent seats and individual vetoes because of the geopolitical settlement reached at the end of the Second World War.
This is not an argument for simply removing Britain or France and replacing them with another powerful country.
That would change the beneficiaries without changing the structure.
The deeper problem is that the Security Council institutionalised the distribution of global power in 1945 and then largely insulated that distribution from the political transformation of the world around it.
The world decolonised. The Security Council’s permanent structure did not.
The composition of the elected Security Council changes constantly.
In 2025, alongside the five permanent members, the Council included Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia. At the end of that year, Algeria, Guyana, South Korea, Sierra Leone and Slovenia completed their terms.
In 2026, they were replaced by Bahrain, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Latvia and Liberia. Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia remained for the second year of their terms.
Look closely at those countries and another layer of the Security Council emerges.
If we know anything at all at this point in time, we know that these members are not politically neutral actors. No states are.
Denmark and Greece are members of NATO and maintain close strategic relationships with the United States. Latvia’s security is connected to NATO and American military power because of its proximity to Russia. Bahrain hosts the United States Fifth Fleet and established diplomatic relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords.
Pakistan does not recognise Israel and has long been an outspoken supporter of Palestine. But has decades of military and security ties with the United States while maintaining an increasingly close strategic relationship with China. Its foreign policy balances between them according to Pakistan’s own interests.
Colombia is one of the clearest example of how quickly the political balance of an elected Security Council seat can change. And that’s deliberate. Under Gustavo Petro, Colombia broke diplomatic relations with Israel over Gaza and openly challenged Washington’s position. The new proxy government has moved to restore relations with Israel, strengthen security cooperation with USA.
Other Council members bring their own security dependencies, trade relationships, regional rivalries and diplomatic histories.
As we know, states do not vote in a political vacuum.
But it is also important to note that not all strategic alignment means automatic obedience. American allies have voted against Washington on Gaza. States dependent on Western security structures have supported resolutions the United States opposed.
That makes the point I’m making about the veto even more revealing.
The United States does not necessarily have to persuade fourteen other Security Council members to accept its position. Russia does not necessarily have to persuade them either. A permanent member can lose the political argument around the table and still win the institutional contest.
Because it has the veto.
18 October 2023
Brazil put forward a resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to allow full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access into Gaza. It condemned the Hamas attacks of 7 October, demanded the release of hostages and called for the protection of civilians, medical workers and humanitarian personnel.
The vote was 12–1–2.
The United States was the only country to vote against it.
The resolution failed.
8 December 2023
The Council considered another resolution, this time demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the release of hostages and humanitarian access.
More than 90 UN member states co-sponsored the draft.
Inside the Security Council, thirteen countries voted for it. Britain abstained.
The United States voted against.
13–1–1.
It failed.
22 December 2023
Russia proposed adding stronger language to another Gaza resolution calling for an urgent suspension of hostilities so that humanitarian aid could safely and unhindered reach civilians.
Ten members supported the amendment.
Four abstained.
One opposed it.
The United States.
10–1–4.
The amendment failed because that one opposing vote belonged to a permanent member.
20 February 2024
Algeria brought forward another draft demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and unhindered humanitarian access.
Thirteen countries voted yes.
Britain abstained.
The United States voted no.
13–1–1.
It failed.
Then the numbers became even more difficult to defend.
20 November 2024
Every Security Council member except the United States supported a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.
14–1.
It failed.
4 June 2025
Every other member supported another resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid.
14–1.
It failed.
18 September 2025
Every other member supported another immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and measures addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
14–1.
It failed.
Three separate votes.
Three different moments in the war.
Three results of 14–1.
And three failed resolutions.
Not because the Security Council could not reach agreement.
It had reached overwhelming agreement.
They failed because the one country voting against them was the United States, and the United States possesses a veto.
The pattern extends beyond ceasefires.
18 April 2024
Twelve Security Council members voted to recommend Palestine for full membership of the United Nations. Britain and Switzerland abstained.
The United States alone voted against.
12–1–2.
It failed.
22 March 2024
Russia and China vetoed a US draft that Washington presented as supporting a ceasefire. But the text did not actually demand an immediate ceasefire. It described one as an “imperative”. Russia and China argued that the Council should explicitly demand one.
Three days later, they voted for Resolution 2728, which did exactly that. The resolution demanded an immediate ceasefire, Russia and China voted yes, the United States abstained, and it passed 14–0–1.
18 September 2025
Fourteen members supported another resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The United States alone voted against it.
14–1.
It failed.
Then, less than a month later, on 9 October 2025, a ceasefire was finally agreed outside the Security Council, following negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar, Egypt and Türkiye.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. For almost two years, the Security Council repeatedly attempted to demand a ceasefire. The United States repeatedly used its veto to prevent it. Then Washington itself became one of the principal brokers of the ceasefire that finally took effect.
The Security Council had not lacked international support for a ceasefire. On three separate occasions, the vote was 14–1.
What it lacked was the consent of the one state with the power to stop everyone else.
The problem is not uniquely American.
On 25 February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, eleven Security Council members supported a draft resolution deploring Russia’s aggression and demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces.
Russia vetoed it. The state accused of aggression possessed the institutional authority to prevent the Security Council from acting against that aggression.
Russia has also repeatedly used its veto, often alongside China, to block Security Council action concerning Syria.
Different states. Different conflicts. Different alliances. The same privilege.
Noting this matters because reducing the problem to American hypocrisy would fundamentally misunderstand it. The United States uses a privilege the system gives it. Russia uses the same privilege. China possesses the same privilege. So do Britain and France.
The central problem is not which country currently exercises the veto.
The problem is that any country possesses unilateral authority to prevent international action concerning itself or those it chooses to protect.
As we have witnessed over the past three years especially, the international courts appear a farce. The credibility of international law itself has been repeatedly undermined. The consequences reach beyond institutional dysfunction.
In 2026, the contradiction became particularly visible following the illegal war involving Iran.
After the United States and Israel attacked Iran, Iran retaliated, including against Gulf states hosting American military facilities. The Security Council subsequently adopted Resolution 2817 condemning Iranian attacks against Gulf states and Jordan.
Thirteen countries supported it.
Russia and China abstained.
The Council condemned Iran.
It did not condemn the preceding US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
This does not require defending Iranian attacks against third countries.
If those attacks violated international law, they should be condemned.
And that! Is precisely the point.
The same legal standard must apply to the action that preceded them.
International law cannot function credibly if aggression is judged according to the identity of the aggressor, the identity of its allies or its position within the international system.
The Geneva Conventions do not establish one set of civilian protections for Palestinians and another for Ukrainians.
The prohibition against aggression does not formally distinguish between American allies and American adversaries.
A country without powerful friends can be condemned, sanctioned and punished. But a permanent member of the Security Council, or a close enough ally of one, can play by a very different set of rules.
There is another problem we cannot ignore.
Giving more countries a vote does not necessarily give them equal power. Countries do not suddenly become equals when they walk into the United Nations simply because each flag gets one vote. Some depend on powerful states for military protection. Others depend on foreign aid, trade, debt relief, infrastructure investment or access to international finance.
Then there are institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, where voting power is itself weighted heavily towards the wealthier economies. The United States holds particularly significant influence in both.
So imagine a smaller or heavily indebted country deciding how to vote at the United Nations. At the same time, it may be negotiating an IMF programme, seeking World Bank financing, relying on American or European aid, depending on Chinese infrastructure investment, or needing military and security assistance from one of the major powers.
That does not mean every vote is bought or coerced. But coercion and pressure are real. And it would be ridiculous to pretend these relationships somehow disappear when an ambassador walks into the Security Council chamber.
Power operates outside the veto too. Through money. Surprise, surprise. Through debt, trade, weapons, aid, security guarantees, diplomatic pressure and access to international institutions.
So abolishing the veto tomorrow would not suddenly make the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France ordinary members of the United Nations. They would still possess enormous economic, military and diplomatic power, and with it the ability to influence countries casting those supposedly equal votes.
The veto is simply the most obvious expression of a much larger problem.
There is the power written into the rules, and there is the power exercised outside them. Any serious reform has to confront both.
Which leaves us with a much harder question than simply whether the veto should go:
How do you build a fairer Security Council when the countries sitting around the table were never equally powerful to begin with?
Simply abolishing the veto and giving everyone an equal vote will not suddenly make countries equal. We have already established that. Powerful states would still have enormous military, economic and diplomatic influence over weaker ones.
So reform has to achieve something more realistic.
Here are some thoughts that are up for discussion.
If Russia is accused of aggression in Ukraine, Russia should not be able to veto action against itself.
If the United States is directly involved in a conflict, it should not be able to veto scrutiny of its own conduct.
The same applies to China, Britain and France.
This principle already exists, although in a limited form. Article 27(3) of the UN Charter requires a country that is party to certain disputes to abstain from voting. Expand it.
No country should be participant, accused and judge at the same time.
A 14–1 vote should not fail because the one happens to be a permanent member.
Nor is the answer to require two or three permanent members to veto a resolution together. That simply creates another problem. Powerful countries can form blocs, make deals and protect one another.
Instead, an overwhelming majority should be able to override a veto.
A 14–1 vote should pass.
A 13–2 vote should pass.
The exact threshold can be debated. The principle is what matters.
One country should never be more powerful than overwhelming agreement around the table.
Genocide, crimes against humanity and major war crimes should not be subject to a veto at all.
There have already been international efforts calling on the permanent members to voluntarily refrain from using their veto in cases involving mass atrocities.
But voluntary restraint is not enough.
We cannot leave it to the country with something to lose to decide whether it feels like restraining itself.
If these crimes are considered crimes against humanity, then no single country should be able to prevent humanity from responding to them.
The Security Council has fifteen members.
The United Nations has 193.
If the Security Council becomes paralysed by a veto over aggression or mass atrocities, there should be a point at which the wider UN membership can override it.
The threshold should be high.
Africa has 54 UN member states but no permanent seat on the Security Council. Latin America and the Caribbean likewise have no permanent seat. India, home to roughly one-sixth of humanity, has no permanent seat.
That cannot continue.
But simply adding more permanent members and giving them vetoes would solve nothing. It would merely make the privileged club larger.
The answer to five countries possessing too much power is not to find another five and give them the same power.
None of this will make powerful countries less powerful outside the United Nations. The United States will still have enormous military and economic influence. China will still have its economic reach. Russia will still have its military and nuclear power. Wealthier countries will still wield influence through trade, finance, aid, debt and international institutions.
There is no reform capable of making those realities disappear.
But that should never have been the objective.
The purpose of reform is not to make every country equally powerful. It is to stop the United Nations from making inequality more powerful than it already is.
The consequences of this system extend far beyond the Security Council. International law itself is losing credibility or should I say, lost credibility. We have watched international courts issue orders and arrest warrants that powerful states can ignore or openly challenge. We have watched UN agencies document violations, commissions investigate them, experts warn of consequences and governments issue condemnation after condemnation.
And then very little to nothing happens.
The United Nations has developed a reputation for doing precisely that. Condemning, expressing concern, calling emergency meetings, passing resolutions and producing reports while wars continue and civilians continue to die. To the point where we could conclude that the UN is useless.
The deeper problem is that the institutions created to uphold international law were never given equal power to enforce it.
The International Court of Justice can issue binding judgments, but it has no police force. When enforcement reaches the Security Council, the veto can enter the equation.
The International Criminal Court can issue arrest warrants, but it depends on states to execute them.
The General Assembly can represent the overwhelming position of the world’s governments, but most of its resolutions are not legally binding.
And the Security Council, the UN body given the strongest powers to act, can be stopped by one of five countries.
These are not separate problems.
They are connected.
We built international institutions capable of establishing rules, investigating violations, documenting atrocities, issuing judgments and condemning those responsible.
What we did not build was an equally reliable system for enforcing those rules against the powerful.
That gap is now grotesquely obvious.
When international law comes down hard on weaker countries but somehow loses its teeth when powerful countries or their allies are involved, people do not see law. They see politics.
When international courts issue arrest warrants that can simply be ignored, people stop seeing justice. Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court over war crimes and crimes against humanity, has travelled to Washington and been welcomed at the White House. Hungary went further. While still bound by the Rome Statute, it welcomed Netanyahu in 2025 rather than arresting him and announced its withdrawal from the ICC.
What is the point of an international arrest warrant if powerful governments can simply decide it does not apply?
And when the United Nations repeatedly tells civilians that their rights are protected while lacking the ability to protect those rights, people stop trusting the institution itself.
That is where we are now.
The danger is that the international system loses the legitimacy on which the entire idea of international law depends. Because law ultimately requires more than treaties and courts. It requires people and states to believe that the rules mean something.
Once international law becomes something enforced against the weak and negotiated around by the powerful, it ceases to deserve the credibility it demands.
Security Council reform is no longer a debate about seats, votes and UN procedure. It is urgent. The credibility of the entire international system is collapsing in front of us.
International law cannot continue to be enforced against the weak and negotiated around by the powerful. Courts cannot issue orders that carry no consequence. The United Nations cannot keep documenting atrocities it is structurally incapable of stopping.
The system needs structural reform now. Not another committee. Not another declaration. Not another decade of discussion.
We either reform it while international law still means something, or watch it become completely irrelevant.
Liz Loh-Taylor.
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