Governments in all countries or most of them affirm their undying devotion to the United Nations and all its purposes and principles; they continually express their determination to uphold its objectives and to strengthen its effectiveness. Today, the underlying presumption has been that the UN is ‘ineffective’ because it has contributed little to the solutions of major problems in recent years.  On one hand it has been argued that Security Council enlargement would make the Council more effective; in the other it has been argued that it would not since most countries today agree that Security Council needs to become more transparent, accountable and equitably representative.  This essay will discuss: Would Security Council enlargement make the Council more effective?

From the beginning of the 1960’s, with the big increase in the membership of the United Nations, there had been proposals for an increase in the size of the Council. This was designed partly to reflect more accurately the composition of the Organization’s membership, particularly to provide more seats for Africans and Asians.  Moreover, the proposal was resisted for some time by the Soviet Union, probably because of her objections to any amendments to the Charter.[1] By the 1980’s the Council was providing valuable assistance for the resolution of conflict and tension in the Gulf, Afghanistan, Angola and Namibia, just to mention a few. Historically, when the UN was formed there was a general desire to learn from the mistakes of the League of Nations ‘which mainly; it felt for four main reasons. First, it has no armed force. Second, it had lacked authority. Third, it has been paralysed during crises by the rule of unanimity. Fourth, the absence of several major powers had made it unrepresentative and impotent’.[2]

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