2026-09-22T04:04:42Zhttps://dora.dmu.ac.uk/server/oai/requestoai:dora.dmu.ac.uk:2086/121022019-03-20T04:02:58Zcom_2086_2388col_2086_2389
Reforming the United Nations Security Council: Making it more Democratic in the Post-Westphalian Legal Order
Bektas, Mehmet
The Security Council has sometimes failed to perform its main duty, which is the maintenance
of international peace and security. The Council’s responsibilities in this regard have grown
as new international challenges have emerged. These challenges include global
environmental issues, refugee flows and mass migration across borders, the rapid spread of
infectious diseases, civil war that threatens international peace and security, global
terrorism, transnational crime and illegal stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons. The Security Council has thus become the subject of both severe criticism and calls
for its structural reform. A variety of reform proposals have been offered by scholars and
politicians, almost all of which have focused solely on state-based solutions. The current
study considers that reforming the Council through such means would not alter its current
state to any significant extent. International law no longer reflects the state-based system of
the Westphalian World Order. The international legal order does not involve only nationstates,
and state-based systems are not able autonomously to deal with problems such as
these in the post-Westphalian era. It is widely acknowledged that there are many non-state
actors that could contribute to enhancing the Council’s representativeness, effectiveness and
accountability. It is thus concluded that a reform proposal for the Security Council must
consider these factors and produce a non-state based solution. It is proposed that the Council
must consider granting formal access to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that
have, as non-state actors, been active in the international legal order, and that have already
made significant contributions to the above-mentioned issues.
De Montfort University
2015-09
Thesis or dissertation
Doctoral
PhD
en
http://hdl.handle.net/2086/12102
https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/2dd46c5f-c556-4074-8fa1-2576988a255b/download
b3a5cdd564434dc123b58a366b146654
https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/4d193182-2f90-43a8-ab3c-685e4f9d393d/download
83c6e8e49fd43e95d2a035e16b9feb80
https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/fe64ddf0-5b2e-43fa-af32-7ebfb772e0f5/download
78074e3b8a5534add636297b434f123a
UN Reform
Security Council
NGOs
Democracy
International Legal Order
Faculty of Business and Law