What Was Lost?
By Jane Boulden
On 17 June, Canada lost its campaign for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2021–2022 term. The desire to get a seat on the Council has its origins in Prime Minister Trudeau’s first election victory, which prompted him to announce that Canada was back on the world stage. The pursuit of a Security Council seat was a central tenet in Trudeau’s efforts to make Canada a prominent player in international institutions once again. The loss was a blow for Trudeau in that he cannot point to the achievement of a Security Council seat as symbolic evidence of the completion of his “we’re back” statement. But for Canada as a whole, was anything else lost as a result of the failure to gain a seat?
In its origins, the creation of non-permanent members of the Council reflects the recognition of the framers of the UN Charter that the idea of five permanent members as the only members of the Security Council would, on its own, be unacceptable to other states. In order to bring some legitimacy to the Council and its decisions, they created a group of non-permanent members. Although their non-permanent status, by definition, limits their role in some ways, the Council’s voting structure means that the permanent members need the non-permanent members on their side in order to get anything done. That fact gives non-permanent members a degree of power. At minimum it provides non-permanent members with a lever of influence. At maximum it represents the ability of non-permanent members to stop potential abuses of the system on the part of the permanent members. These are the reasons a non-permanent seat is so sought after. Prestige is part of it, of course, but the ability to work towards ensuring national and international security goals at the very highest level of the international system is at its root.
The way in which states are chosen for non-permanent seats is determined by Article 23 of the Charter, which states that the first criteria is the contribution made by a state to international peace and security. From that starting point, “due regard” should then be paid to equitable geographic distribution. In practice, the criteria work the other way around. From the earliest days of the UN, a regional allocation has been in place that establishes how many Security Council seats are allocated to each region in a given year. Each regional group then determines to what extent they are going to weigh other criteria in choosing who will take their seat. As a result of the way in which the system has evolved, Canada moved from the pre-1960s category of Commonwealth states, to join the Western European and Other Group (WEOG) after the Council expanded its membership in 1966. Most regional groups have developed a system that provides a consensus choice or choices so that the wider campaign process of seeking votes from General Assembly members is avoided. Thus, this time around, Mexico and India came forward as unopposed candidates. For its part, Canada ran against two highly competitive opponents, Ireland and Norway.
In joining a campaign with two players that had already announced their candidacy, Canada either had to make the case that it was equivalent or better to Norway or Ireland in terms of contributions to international peace and security, or it had to find other ways to win votes. The final vote, Norway 130, Ireland 128 and Canada 108, falls out roughly in keeping with assessments of the contributions of each state to international peace and security. So, in that sense one could argue that the result is in keeping with the intention of the Charter.
Such an argument provides little salve to the Canadian government at the moment. The loss means, for example, that Canada is now experiencing its longest period ever without a presence on the Council. And that, more than anything else, is where the impact of the loss lies.
This is a time of significant and sustained change in the international arena. One of the most worrying changes we are witnessing is the direct challenge to a rules-based international order. A rules-based international order has been a cornerstone objective of Canada’s foreign and defence policy for decades. Such an order links directly to global stability, as well as to the collective defence and collective security measures aimed at ensuring that stability. A Council seat is just one of many ways for Canada to pursue its foreign and defence policy goals, as well to take a lead in highlighting and pushing back against the most worrying threats to global stability and order. But, a seat on the Council is a powerful tool. One could discuss how effective the Council is these days, or how effective it is likely to be in the next couple of years. But that is a different issue from the value of the venue itself. In this sense, what is lost is not so much the desired symbolism that Canada is back. Rather, what is lost is literally a seat at a table. That seat matters because it provides direct access to the five permanent members. It matters also because it would have given Canada the ability to play a leadership role in guarding against a further slide back in global order and stability, which is the top priority of Canada’s national foreign and defence policy goals.
Dr. Jane Boulden is a Research Fellow at the CIDP at Queen’s. She is also a Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. Much of her recent work focuses on the United Nations Security Council and the role of non-permanent members, as well as UN efforts to deal with conflict in the post-Cold War environment. During her time at Oxford, where she MacArthur Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, she ran a research project on regional organizations dealing with conflict in Africa, and another on the UN and terrorism. Find out more about her work here.
