Malaysia Tells UN It Is 'Sick Of' The Veto And Calls For Its Abolition On Behalf Of The 'Global Majority'

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 14 Of 15

File Photo: @DrSJaishankar on X

Malaysia told the UN General Assembly it was "sick of" the Security Council veto and called for its abolition, arguing that the world's "global majority" could no longer simply live with decisions taken by a few.

Delivering Malaysia's national statement on Saturday, September 26, Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said nowhere was the need for reform more critical. "No place requires reform more than the Security Council. No place more clearly exposes the weaknesses of the United Nations than the Security Council," he said.

His frustration centred on Gaza. Malaysia and other states, he said, had pursued every avenue, including calls for an immediate ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian aid, punitive action against Israel and full UN membership for Palestine. "Yet, again and again, the collective will of this assembly has encountered the silencing effect of the veto. Malaysia will speak plainly: We are sick of it." The United States has vetoed several Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Mohamad argued that enlarging the Council would not be enough. "Expanding the Council's membership alone will not be enough to resolve its failures. It is the veto that must be challenged, and it is the veto that must be abolished. We must begin the work now," he said.

He urged members to make full use of General Assembly resolution 76/262, adopted in 2022, which requires the Assembly to meet whenever a permanent member casts a veto, calling it "a launchpad for greater accountability regarding the use of the veto". There was still time to save the global order, he said, and paralysis in the Council should not become paralysis of the UN.

He framed Malaysia's role in terms of the middle powers. Most countries at the UN are not great powers, he said, yet decisions taken by a few shape the future of all. "We are the global majority," he said. "We must not simply live with the consequences of choices made elsewhere. We must help shape those choices." Middle powers such as Malaysia, and regional organisations such as ASEAN, could keep dialogue alive when major powers were unable to agree, he said.

He warned that disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb could raise food, fuel and living costs for households far beyond West Asia, and called for a greater voice for developing countries in the governance of artificial intelligence.

On the same day, Anadolu Agency reported that South Africa and Malaysia had led a group of 40 states in a demand at the UN to defend international law.

Malaysia did not use the language of multipolarity. Its emphasis differed from Russia's or China's: it was less about which major power should lead than about loosening the grip that a few permanent members hold over an institution meant to represent all.

The national statements delivered at this year's UN General Assembly left little doubt about how far the ground has shifted. Opening the debate, Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders that "we are clearly moving towards a multipolar world" and that the movement is irreversible, though he warned it could take the shape of fragmentation and transactionalism rather than a networked order rooted in international law. The backdrop was hard to miss: a US-Israeli war with Iran nearly seven months old, the US capture of Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro in January, and a US President who used the same podium to say he was weighing a deal with Tehran against "annihilating" it. Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the World Trade Organization was on life support and condemned the use of tariffs as "a weapon of coercion and blackmail", while India's S. Jaishankar declared that the post-1945 order is giving way to new realities. Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Spain's Pedro Sánchez, from very different vantage points, both called for an end to the veto held by the Security Council's five permanent members. Russia's Sergey Lavrov went further, telling the Assembly that "the dictatorship of a single hegemon has run amok" and that a fairer, multipolar order was emerging. What remains unsettled is not whether power is spreading, but whether the institutions built in 1945 can adjust fast enough to hold it together.