New City: The foreign minister of Sierra Leone told Arab News on Tuesday that after the war in Ukraine ends, the world must be ready for a new status quo in which all nations have a voice.

According to David Francis, "for the first time, those who have been marginalised, excluded, underrepresented, or unrepresented in the permanent and non-permanent category of the UN Security Council are now saying 'Our voice must be heard.'"

On Tuesday, the UN's General Assembly elected his nation a non-permanent member of the Security Council, the global body in charge of upholding global peace and security. He was speaking at the UN's headquarters in New York at the time. Slovenia, Algeria, Guyana, Republic of Korea, and Sierra Leone were also chosen to serve two-year terms that will start on January 1, 2024.

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There are 15 members of the Security Council, but only the P5—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—are permanent members. They each have the authority to veto any motion or decision of the council.

The 193-member General Assembly elects the remaining 10, non-permanent members in a manner that corresponds to the geographical distribution of member states by region.

The need for Security Council reforms to ensure that the positions of countries in the Global South are better represented and give them the ability to play a bigger role in efforts to solve their problems has grown recently.

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Francis predicted that 2024 will be "a defining year for the reform of the Security Council," and the P5 are genuinely committed to bringing more underrepresented regions, like Africa, into the fold.

However, there are still concerns about whether the five permanent members would be genuinely receptive to the idea of the African Union having a permanent seat on the council and whether, absent that, reforms would mean anything at all.

Concerning these issues, Francis responded when asked by Arab News: "Well, things happened in the world: The Ukraine crisis, the dominant geopolitics, and the emergence of the Global South solidarity is very important.

"Neither the Russian Federation nor the Western nations themselves should be taken for granted. There is a general consensus that the Security Council needs to be reformed in order to address the issue of historical injustice and underrepresentation of women, as I have discussed with European foreign ministers, including the UK foreign secretary, the US deputy secretary of state, the French, and I recently returned from China, where I had the same discussion with the Chinese foreign minister. Therefore, I am sure that we will take that action.

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The five newly elected council members will join current non-permanent members Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, and Switzerland after the two-year terms of Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, and the UAE expire on December 31.