African Presidents Call for Permanent African Seats on U.N. Security Council

Nearly every African leader to have spoken at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week has called for Africa to have permanent representation on the Security Council.

President John Mahama of Ghana said on Thursday that reform of the Council was not a favor to Africa, but an “imperative for the legitimacy, the credibility and the survival of the United Nations.”

With the fastest-growing, youngest population of any continent, Africa is expected to be home to a quarter of the people on the planet by 2050, making it central to the future of the world’s economy and to deciding questions of international peace and security.

President Joseph Boakai of Liberia said that the lack of a permanent seat for a continent of 1.5 billion people was a “historical injustice.”

Mr. Boakai pointed out that 80 percent of the Council’s mandates concern Africa’s peace and security and noted that “Africa remains without a single permanent seat on the organ responsible for global peace.”

His demands echoed those of many African presidents at the General Assembly, who want two permanent seats for Africa on the Council, with full veto power, as well as five nonpermanent seats to be reserved for African nations, whose states make up a third of the U.N.’s membership.

African leaders want the veto to be abolished, but as long as it exists, they say it should be extended to any new permanent members.

The African Union agreed two decades ago to call for greater representation on the Security Council, but recently the policy has developed into a more concerted campaign. Leaders including President William Ruto of Kenya, President Duma Boko of Botswana and President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of Namibia have used their speeches at the General Assembly session to push for the seats.

On Tuesday, when the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, addressed the Assembly, he called the lack of permanent representation for Africa “unjust and indefensible.”

In 2024, the United States under the Biden administration said that it would support the addition of two new permanent seats for African countries on the Council.