At the Watchtower: Africa and the UN Security Council’s Elected Ten (E10)

Abstract

The United Nations’ (UN) charter endows its Security Council (UNSC) with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Yet, there are contradictions in its institutional setup. The two-tiered system of membership, with five permanent (P5), veto-wielding member states and 10 non-permanent members (the elected ten or E10) that have no right to the veto, renders the UN institutionally unequal. Further, while there is no permanent seat for any African country, conflicts on the continent are a foremost part of the UNSC’s workload. The majority of UN police and military troops, 84 per cent, are deployed to peace support operations on the African continent. As of June 2023, nearly half of the conflict situations on the Council’s agenda were in Africa. France, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US), known as the P3, were the penholders for all but one of the 14 African situations on the official work programme for the first half of 2023. The limits of impermanence also affect other types of E10 states, including regional powers such as Brazil and India or small(er) states with important track records in development cooperation, such as the Nordic countries. For African, Nordic and European states like Germany, making the Council more effective is also crucial to their conflict management efforts and part of the regional commitments of the