Marking the UN’s 80th year, the United Kingdom set out its position on Charter adherence and institutional reform at a UN Security Council meeting on the future of the organisation on 24 October 2025. Ambassador James Kariuki CMG, the UK’s Chargé d’Affaires to the UN, delivered the statement in New York.
The government’s assessment credited the UN with maintaining ceasefires, brokering peace deals, supporting state-building and demining, facilitating nearly thirty disarmament treaties, and providing humanitarian assistance to more than 100 million people each year in contexts including Palestine, Sudan and Myanmar.
The UK encouraged Member States to use the Secretary-General’s reform initiative to refocus delivery across conflict prevention, development, and the climate and nature crises, arguing that the UN80 milestone should produce a stronger, more effective organisation.
On the Security Council specifically, the UK backed changes to both permanent and non-permanent categories, including permanent African representation and permanent seats for Germany, Japan, India and Brazil, to make the Council more representative of today’s world.
Any enlargement of the Council would require amendment of the UN Charter. Article 108 provides that amendments must be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly and ratified by two-thirds of Member States, including all permanent Council members, in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.
General Assembly debates have repeatedly underlined this threshold and kept the reform file active through intergovernmental negotiations in informal plenary. Most recently, the Assembly decided to continue those negotiations into its seventy-ninth session.
Recalling the UK’s long association with the UN, the statement noted that the Security Council first met in London in 1946, positioning today’s proposals as consistent with the UK’s long-standing support for multilateral rules and institutions.
The statement also challenged Russia’s presentation of itself as a defender of the Charter, citing the invasion of Ukraine, activity by a so-called shadow fleet circumventing restrictions, and other malign operations against multiple states as inconsistent with sovereign equality and the prohibition on the use of force against territorial integrity.
For policy practitioners, the signal is UK openness to an enlargement model that increases permanent African representation alongside the G4, while leaving questions on veto and working methods to negotiation. Should consensus form, ratification by all five permanent members would be decisive before any reform could enter into force.
Substantive movement now depends on whether Member States can shift from principles to text within the General Assembly’s intergovernmental negotiations. Until then, the UK’s emphasis is on practical Charter compliance as the baseline for preventing and resolving conflict.