The UN will debate a draft resolution aimed at justifying the use of the veto On the initiative of Liechtenstein, the 193 members of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) will debate, on Tuesday, a draft resolution obliging the five permanent members of the Security Council to justify their recourse to the veto. According to diplomats, the text should be voted on soon. According to Agence France-Presse, which was able to obtain the document, it provides for the General Assembly to be convened “within ten working days following the opposition of one or more permanent members of the Security Council, to hold a debate on the situation in which the veto was cast”. This old idea was revived with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thanks to its right of veto, Moscow is paralyzing any action in this dossier by the Security Council, which should nevertheless intervene as required by its mandate as guarantor of world peace defined by the Charter of the United Nations. This Liechtenstein project is co-sponsored by some fifty countries including the United States but, significantly, by none of the four other permanent members of the Security Council (Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom). The Security Council also has ten non-permanent members, who do not have the right of veto. Among the fifty or so co-sponsors (committed to voting for the text) are Ukraine and also Japan and Germany, two states aspiring to a seat as permanent members in a possible enlarged Security Council to better represent the world. current. The positions of India, Brazil or South Africa, other contenders for a permanent seat, have not been revealed at this stage. Even if it does not sponsor the text, France will vote in favor, according to a diplomat. The choice of London, Beijing and Moscow, critical of an initiative deemed controversial, is not known. “We are particularly concerned about Russia’s shameful tendency to abuse its right of veto over the past two decades,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement. The adoption of the Liechtenstein resolution “will be an important step towards (…) the transparency and accountability of all permanent members of the Security Council,” she said. Since the first veto used – by the Soviet Union in 1946 – Russia has used it 143 times, far ahead of the United States (86 times), the United Kingdom (30 times), China and France (18 times each). To limit the use of the veto and after having used it in 1989 for the last time, France proposed in 2013 to voluntarily deprive itself of it in the event of “mass crimes”. Co-defended by Mexico and supported by a hundred countries, this idea has so far not had any follow-up.