Alfred Maurice de Zayas Quotes

The United Nations is in need of reform. The Security Council reflects the world exactly as it was 60 years ago—not today.

The UN is hardly democratic.

I thought that the United Nations is a creature of the five super-powers who were given veto powers. I don't like veto powers at all.

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

Let there be an end to the arrogance of the big powers who miss no opportunity to put the rights of the people in question. Africa's absence from the club of those who have the right to veto is unjust and should be ended.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

To properly reflect the changes of the world and of the UN, with its growing number of member states, we would like to see an enlargement of the SC that gives room for new members, not least developing countries.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

The rules that organizations such as the United Nations rely on were not written by the majority of the world’s people, who have long seen powerful states declare exceptions for themselves. Newly powerful states will challenge this system --

One of the problems with the Security Council is that there are vetoes, and they do not allow us to do what might be justified from the point of view of sanctions.

India has a legitimate right to becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

The G7 - and earlier, the G8 - were a group of countries that shared the same values with regard to freedom and democracy, and through the annexation of Crimea, Russia made it clear at a certain point that these values of keeping the peace, integrity of the borders of a country were not being respected.

The U.N. must be made more inclusive, accountable, democratic, effective, and reflective of a world in which political and economic power has shifted.

When one's greatest 'world stage' ambition is a non-voting seat on the U.N. Security Council five years down the road, one would not want to say anything to hurt the feelings of the veto holders in Moscow or Beijing. We get it. But let's at least be honest about all this, please. Enough of the 'Canada is back' slogans already.

Everybody knows that the United Nations is not the Secretary-General; he has an important position, but the United Nations is the states within this organization, and to be frank, most of the people say only the five permanent members; this is the United Nations because they have the veto, they can do whatever they want and they can refuse whatever they want, and if there's a reform that is very much needed for this organization.

The U.N. is capable of endless process and mindless psychobabble, but as far as getting the job done on the ground, I just don't see them doing it.

There is an ongoing debate about the reform of the U.N. system.

It may surprise people to know that I advocate the reform of the United Nations, not its abolishment.

The key to U.N. reform is giving Americans a clearer picture of what the U.N. is and what it isn't, what it can be and what it can't be.

We need a reform of the Security Council. It must be perceived as truly representative by all the 191 member states, to uphold the credibility and legitimacy of the UN as the main political arena.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

In the euphoria after the Cold War, there was a misplaced notion that the UN could solve every problem anywhere.

The interests of the United States are better served by demanding reform and seeing that reform takes place than by removing our influence from the UN.

We believe that the vote would have been close. We regret that in the face of an explicit threat to veto by a permanent member, the vote-counting became a secondary consideration.