Joint Nordic Statement at the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) 4-5 May

Check Against Delivery

Excellences, Co-Chairs,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and my own country, Denmark.

This has already been an engaging and stimulating week for discussions on reform of the UN Security Council and its working methods. I will therefore focus my intervention on two key messages: (1) Our appreciation to the co-chairs for their proactive and innovative efforts to operationalize the commitment of Member States in the UN75 Declaration “to instil new life” into UN Security Council reform; and (2) Our reflections on how we best take forward the valuable work Member States have achieved together through this year’s IGN process, as part of our preparations for next year’s Summit of the Future.

Ahead of today’s meeting, we have all received a revised version of the Elements Paper. We wish to thank the co-Chairs for faithfully updating this necessary record of convergences and divergences among Member States’ positions on Security Council reform. The recent revisions based on this year’s deliberations demonstrate the apparent growth and steady progress in our discussions. They are also a tribute to the leadership and gentle but steady steering of the process by our committed co-Chairs.

The Nordics welcome in particular the new point 7 on working methods. It is indeed very relevant to make the distinction between reform issues related to working methods, which we are already encountering with the Council in its current configuration, and which do not require a Charter revision, against those of a future expanded Council. We can begin to address the former already today, outside of the context of the IGN. We similarly welcome the listing of concrete options to limit the scope and the use of the veto.

Related to this, we also welcome the initiative by the co-Chairs to share Member States’ recommendations related to working method reforms for the current Council – as expressed in the IGN process – with the Chair of the Security Council Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions (IWG). We welcome the proposal by the co-Chairs for a dialogue with the IWG chair and hope that this will indeed be institutionalised going forward. We would therefore like to see a reference to this be added to this in the Elements Paper. 

Another valuable initiative, which we have also previously commended, is the co-Chairs’ introduction of an online IGN repository. We strongly believe that this will benefit in particular the majority of the UN Membership made up of small and medium-size States, and would like to see it continue to grow to also include more documentation from past IGN sessions, including decisions, proposals, working documents etc. 

Finally, we would be amiss not to mention this week’s panel discussion with experts from think tanks and academia, where we once again saw the co-Chairs’ dedication to broadening our perspectives and thinking outside the box – and the horseshoe – as well as Member States’ openness to engage constructively with new ideas.

Overall, this year's IGN process has done well in bringing out nuances in order to shed light on common ground and has also demonstrated the crosscutting nature of many of the issues at the heart of the five clusters. We commend the co-Chairs for this.

Co-Chairs,

Looking ahead to the future of the IGN process and how we continue to make steady and tangible progress toward Security Council reform in the near and medium term, a first step will be to ensure that we continue to build on the Elements Paper toward the establishment of the broadest possible political agreement around our convergences, as we continue to narrow our divergences. Here we continue to rely on the flexibility and ingenuity of Member States – and ultimately their willingness to compromise – in coming up with proposals that serve our common desire for a more inclusive, transparent, accountable – and ultimately more effective UN Security Council.

We, the Nordics, see next year’s Summit of the Future as an important milestone and opportune inflection point for Member States to come forward with concrete shared recommendations for a way forward on Council reform. The Summit will thus be an opportunity for UN Member States to reaffirm our common commitment to the UN Charter and to Security Council reform. To this end, we welcome the work of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism as a valuable input to our IGN discussions and echo their call for a renewed effort to reform the UN Security Council.

The Nordics will not insist on a specific approach. The most important thing is that we arrive at a concrete and meaningful result. As this year’s IGN session has so clearly demonstrated, a key precondition for progress in the IGN process is for Member States to approach the co-Chairs with flexibility, openness and trust.

The stars seem aligned in support of Council reform on the bleak backdrop of new global challenges, spurring a shared sense of urgency by the Secretary-General, Member States – and not least among the general public. This is particularly true for those most affected by threats to international peace and security, given the Council’s current inability to effectively and proactively address political crises and armed conflict.

We are looking forward to hearing more about the co-Chairs’ planned way ahead. You can count on full Nordic support for the co-Chairs to lead us to a good outcome from this IGN session.

Thank you.