Russia wants an African country on UN Security Council – Lavrov

The UN Security Council should have been expanded “long ago” to include African nations as permanent members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said in an interview with Russian media.

”Countries such as India, Brazil, and representatives of Africa along with them should have been in the Security Council on a permanent basis for a long time,” Lavrov told the Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty in an interview which will be published in full on Monday.

”This is necessary to ensure representativeness, the representation of the world majority,” Lavrov added.

The Security Council consists of 15 members, ten of which serve two-year terms and cannot veto resolutions. Formed in 1945, the Security Council can enforce sanctions, authorize military action, and refer cases to the International Criminal Court – but only with the unanimous consent of the five permanent members.

These five nations – the US, UK, China, France, and Russia – were the first five states to acquire nuclear weapons, and the veto system and its resulting deadlock was largely engineered to prevent them from engaging in nuclear war with one another.

India, Brazil, and South Africa have long lobbied to join the council’s permanent members, and in a statement released during last month’s UN General Assembly in New York, the three countries expressed “frustration with the paralysis” of expansion talks.

In a statement last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he supports expanding the body to better serve the interests of the Global South, particularly Africa.

”We stand for granting African countries their rightful place in the structures that determine the world’s fate, including the UN Security Council and the G20, as well as for reforming the global financial and trade institutions in a way that meets their interests,” Putin wrote ahead of that year’s Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg.

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