This is the first of two articles mapping three of these pathways. This article outlines processes through the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), which are non-binding, but can demonstrate the unpopularity of particular permanent member (P5) actions, target the legitimacy of the Security Council (UNSC) and move the levers of international justice. It will also explore processes through the UNSC — where concerned parties have tried to reframe the UNSC’s agenda over time — to break the P5’s monopoly of control over information and leadership on conflict cases via coalition-building and procedural innovations, and to divide humanitarian and political portfolios to enable humanitarian relief. The second article will examine processes through the U.N. Secretariat.

The General Assembly’s Role in Navigating Gridlock

The UNGA is sometimes understood as the weakest body within the U.N. system because it cannot pass binding resolutions, has a one-country, one-vote structure, and is a primarily deliberative body — but in some ways, it has the most space for diplomatic innovation when the UNSC is beset by inaction. There is even an argument that the UNSC’s gridlock strengthened its relationship with the UNGA in 2022, with the UNSC invoking the “Uniting for Peace” resolution to refer Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to UNGA, and then new diplomatic momentum for formal UNGA mechanisms following a P5 veto — both moves that could democratize UNSC decision-making.

Powerful states often lose in the UNGA — and indeed, for the U.N. system to retain its legitimacy and the investment that its other member states make in it, sometimes the P5 must lose. Accordingly, the UNGA is a place where states can build counter-hegemonic coalitions that challenge powerful states, hold an anti-colonial line and try to pressure the P5.

The UNGA’s emphasis on the sovereign equality of member states within the body; the absence of formal mechanisms for powerful states to pull rank; and the three singular powers of the UNGA — budgetary power, staffing power and knowledge production — give it unique breadth of action. Countries can demonstrate the illegitimacy of P5 actions by voting to condemn them; can help move the levers of international justice by establishing independent investigative mechanisms, as they have done in Syria, or criminal tribunals, as they did in Cambodia; and can help fund and staff the critical bodies that deal with the humanitarian and human rights consequences that can follow from cases of UNSC gridlock.

The UNSC has no human rights mandate. But the multilayered, overlapping human rights mandates and tasks of different U.N. bodies, the UNGA’s funding and personnel mandates, and the vox populi function it serves for the U.N.’s member states, mean that the UNGA may be able to offer an unexpectedly wide avenue for diplomatic action and rebuke on the rights violations associated with conflicts where the UNSC is gridlocked. And diplomats have argued strengthening the UNGA’s role vis-à-vis peace and security issues is important because it doesn’t require a charter amendment — just diplomatic creativity.

Parties confronting gridlock at the UNSC have exercised this diplomatic creativity to advance multilateral goals via two primary sets of strategies: (1) demonstrating the unpopularity of UNSC actions and targeting the UNSC’s legitimacy by demanding accountability when the P5 obstruct decision-making; and (2) underwriting efforts toward international justice, helping demand accountability for the victims of violence.

Targeting the UNSC’s Legitimacy

A permanent member can exercise its veto no matter how unpopular its action is, but the veto can’t change how little support the action has — and the UNGA can underline unpopularity by adopting non-binding resolutions that allow member-states to vote in explicit condemnation of the action. Accordingly, one set of strategies when the UNSC is gridlocked is for delegates in the General Assembly to sponsor and build support for resolutions that condemn P5 inaction or obstruction, as they have done when the P5 have exercised their vetoes or prevented collective action on Syria, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. Even singularly powerful states that can act easily despite global opposition worry about both their popularity and the UNSC’s legitimacy. Building large coalitions to vote for these resolutions via the traditional diplomatic work of cultivating slow, patient relationships, and appealing to universal values embedded in the U.N. Charter, facilitates and underscores a P5 member’s diplomatic isolation on a particular issue.

The UNGA has also established new mechanisms for holding the UNSC to account. In April 2022, after a years-long campaign initially spearheaded by Lichtenstein and eventually co-sponsored by 83 member states — including France, the United Kingdom and the United States — UNGA passed a resolution requiring any P5 state exercising its veto to explain why to the UNGA. The mechanism shifts the veto from the end of a diplomatic conversation at the UNSC to the beginning of an exchange with the larger body.

Underwriting International Justice

Advancing accountability for the victims of violence is another pathway concerned parties have pursued through UNGA. While International Criminal Court referrals come from the UNSC, the General Assembly can draw on its parallel role in international peace and security using non-forceful, non-binding measures by authorizing investigations that collect and preserve evidence, and accordingly facilitate domestic prosecutions via universal jurisdiction, or via multi-state or international courts that could prosecute perpetrators in gridlocked cases for their violations of human rights and international humanitarian law treaties.

A key example of the new creativity in this arena is the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) for Syria, established in 2016. The mechanism is charged with collecting, preserving and analyzing “evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations and abuses,” and with preparing this evidence for national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may have jurisdiction over these crimes. It was “born of the blockage” at the UNSC, and as its head, Catherine Marchi-Uhel, said, despite P5 obstruction, pursues a strategy of enabling not just one human rights investigation, but hundreds of investigations globally.

Although the UNGA has authorized human rights investigations before, the IIIM represents a new front: as Anni Pues has written, it was “established without Syrian consent, which is a historic first for the General Assembly. It is also the first time that such a body is tasked with investigations that fulfil prosecution standards, that serves as an evidence repository as well as a connecting hub between different justice actors,” and has “served as a blueprint for a new generation of investigative mechanisms.”

Challenging the P5’s Monopoly on Power at the UNSC

The UNSC is specifically structured to let the P5 grind its work to a halt, and has rarely used its most explicit tool to manage gridlock — the Uniting for Peace resolution, which sends an issue that the UNSC cannot agree on to the UNGA. But “we should not confuse the thermometer for the problem itself,” as the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director of policy planning has said: The UNSC is deadlocked because diplomacy is deadlocked — and when diplomacy starts to move, so too might multilateral action. The threat of a veto more frequently produces creative diplomatic work from the elected 10 (E10) members of the UNSC via penholding and slow precedent-setting; highlights the importance of building deep knowledge about the UNSC’s working methods and the technical aspects of global governance, often with assistance from non-state actors; and makes how the Council meets a potential venue for change.

Creative Diplomacy from the Elected 10

The P5 may have veto power, but the E10 can shape the UNSC’s agenda, work and procedures. The E10 first emerged as a unified coalition in the mid-2010s, and via cooperation, strategic alliances and careful advocacy with past and future elected members, have shaped the UNSC’s working methods, the thematic issues it considers and country-specific files.

As Martin Gallagher, deputy permanent representative and political coordinator for the Irish Mission to the United Nations, put it, “As elected members, the threat of a vetoed resolution shouldn’t keep us from trying to solve problems.” Instead, in some cases, small states have started taking diplomatic actions on gridlocked cases quietly, and then used a strategic “mixture of doing things quietly and then sometimes dialing them up to create precedent” for action, as expert Natalie Samarsinghe said.

This dynamic is particularly notable in the penholder system. Penholding is the informal practice by which one or more of the UNSC’s members initiate and chair the informal drafting process for UNSC resolutions. In recent years, the E10 have either taken or shared the lead on an increasing number of files. Their ongoing work has been instrumental in the Council’s continued authorization of cross-border humanitarian aid in Syria. During complex 2014 negotiations, countries led by Australia, Luxembourg, and Jordan found draft language to satisfy the divided P5. Zaid Ra’ad Al Hussein was then Jordan’s permanent representative to the U.N., and by his account, Russia would not agree to the humanitarian provisions if the United Kingdom continued to hold the pen on Syria — and so the pen went to the E10, with Australia, Luxembourg, and Jordan “passing the baton” to elected members that succeeded: between 2014-2022, Sweden, Japan, Kuwait, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Norway and Kenya. Even as the political mediation process has stalled, establishing a separate humanitarian file for the Syrian conflict has enabled some multilateral negotiations for assistance to continue, while potentially establishing a future precedent for other gridlocked cases, as well.

In some cases, some of the E10 may want a veto from the P5 on the table as a strategy for moving diplomacy. As Louise Fréchette, former deputy secretary-general, said, “forcing the veto is a name and shame issue — there’s a political value to this, even if it’s not an avenue for action. It’s not without impact because permanent members do not like to use the veto — they know they’ll be in the doghouse with not just a cross-section of other member-states, but also with interest groups and the press.” Accordingly, sometimes putting clear text on the table to be vetoed and then following it with a concerted communication campaign that clearly ostracizes the vetoing state can help spark a larger pressure campaign.

Leveraging Deep Knowledge About the U.N.

Deep knowledge of the U.N. system and the UNSC’s working methods is an important asset to concerned parties trying to navigate gridlock at the UNSC. “Not knowing how the Council operates, on paper or in practice, puts members at a real disadvantage,” Isis Gonsalves, political coordinator of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ permanent U.N. mission, wrote in her account of her country’s term on the UNSC. “Aware that we had a small team and lacked the institutional memory of the permanent members and even of those that sit frequently on the Security Council,” she said, “we made mastery of working methods and procedures of the Council a top priority ahead of our term.”

NGOs and think tanks can provide the E10 with vital training and background knowledge about the U.N. system. Security Council Report, in particular, helps break the P5’s monopoly of knowledge through trainings at the beginning of newly elected UNSC member’s terms, as well as regular reports and briefings. Information is a critical tool, Samarsinghe said, “especially letting small states know what kinds of tools are in the charter they can use — obscure procedure is power” that these states can then use to build precedent. Non-state groups with deep expertise about the U.N. system can help small states, in particular, see what tools in the U.N. Charter are available for their use, and can help facilitate a birds’ eye view of the U.N. system to identify available pathways when the UNSC is gridlocked — a particularly important body of knowledge for issues like human rights and humanitarian crises, where multiple U.N. bodies have overlapping mandates, some of which do not require UNSC consent.  

Moving the Window

Finally, another set of pathways for navigating gridlock involves moving conversation slowly via briefings, careful use of the UNSC’s agenda and a variation in kinds of UNSC meetings. Some experts identify the Arria Formula Meeting, an informal meeting of the UNSC with no formal record and no formally designated product convened by a UNSC member to hear “the views of individuals, organizations or institutions on matters within” the UNSC’s mandate, as crucial. Past briefers have included heads of state, high-level U.N. officials, non-state parties to conflict, NGO and civil society representatives, and members of civil society affected by violence.

These meetings can facilitate conversations on otherwise-blocked issues. Some have questioned whether their usefulness is declining via overuse, while others argue a decline of informal closed-door sessions and consultations tends to hurt the UNSC: while public meetings are emblematic of a process where the purpose of the debate is to establish public and symbolic positions on the official record rather than to make diplomatic progress, informal closed-door meetings allow people to shift positions. These choices can themselves be contentious, however — recent divisions among the P5 and the E10 over what kind of meetings to hold on crisis in Ethiopia, for example, have stalled consideration over what the UNSC’s role in the crisis should be.

Skillful management of the UNSC agenda also makes space for diplomatic action. As Zaid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in February 2023, “when we think of the UNSC’s work, we have to separate the standing agenda items, which are almost mechanical, from the sudden crises. … The fact that they can get the standing items through speaks to the dynamism of the E10,” while on sudden crises, “so often the canniness, skill, of the diplomat matters, not necessarily the budget of the state. Especially a diplomatic staff with good lawyers on it.”

Collective efforts toward addressing the crisis in Myanmar offer an example of this agenda management. A single resolution on Myanmar with two P5 abstentions passed in 2022, after over 15 years of crisis and divisions at the UNSC. During this time, the United Kingdom established a slow, regular practice of having a briefing from a special adviser on the crisis; at times, the UNSC held briefings on Myanmar under “any other business,” in what appeared to be “a concession to members, such as China, who prefer not to have a formal discussion on Myanmar,” according to Security Council Report, which also noted, “One of the key tools at the UNSC’s disposal is putting key contentious issues under the “any other business.” This strategy of keeping the conflict on the UNSC’s radar despite P5 objections made space for continued debate and, eventually, some implicit agreement.

Anjali Dayal was a 2022-2023 senior scholar in residence at the U.S. Institute of Peace and is an associate professor of international politics at Fordham University.