CAR President Urges Africa's Greater Role on UN Security Council

President Faustin Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic stood before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2020 with a dual message: his nation was hemorrhaging economically from the pandemic, and Africa deserved a stronger voice in the rooms where global power is decided.

In a pre-recorded address to the assembly's annual debate, Touadera laid out the immediate crisis first. The coronavirus had dealt a blow to his country's economy that economists were projecting would shrink by as much as 1.2 percent. But he moved quickly past the pandemic to a larger argument about how the world's institutions were structured. The UN, he said, remained the best available framework for solving problems that crossed borders and defied national solutions. Yet the organization itself needed to reckon with its own limitations. Seventy-five years into its existence, the UN had accumulated weaknesses that demanded honest assessment and reform.

The reform Touadera had in mind was specific: the Security Council needed to change. He joined other African nations and the African Union in calling for the council to be restructured so that the continent had genuine representation in its decision-making. The current arrangement, he argued, forced nations to pursue narrow self-interest rather than collective solutions. Africa, with its 54 member states, deserved a seat at the table where the world's most consequential security decisions were made.

But Touadera was not speaking from a position of theoretical concern. His own country was a case study in why international cooperation mattered and why it was failing. In February 2019, his government had signed a peace agreement with fourteen armed groups, a document meant to end years of conflict and create space for reconciliation. The government had kept its commitments. International guarantors and facilitators of the agreement had worked to uphold it. Yet the armed groups that had signed the accord continued to wage war against civilians. Massive violations of international humanitarian law and human rights were being perpetrated across the country by the very groups that had pledged to stop fighting.

Despite these breaches, Touadera's government was pushing forward. Security sector reform was underway. Electoral authorities were preparing to hold elections on schedule, in line with the constitution. The UN's stabilization mission in the country, known as MINUSCA, was helping to redeploy defense and security forces. But progress was fragile and incomplete. The president made a direct appeal: the international community needed to sustain its support if the peace agreement was to have any chance of taking root. He also called for the full lifting of the arms embargo that had been imposed on his country, arguing that his government needed the capacity to defend itself and enforce the agreement.

Touadera's address captured a tension at the heart of contemporary global governance. The institutions designed to prevent conflict and promote stability were themselves structured in ways that excluded much of the world from their deliberations. Meanwhile, on the ground in places like the Central African Republic, those same institutions were being asked to help hold together agreements that were being shattered by actors who had signed them in bad faith. The president was asking for two things at once: a seat at the table where decisions were made, and the resources to implement decisions that had already been made. Neither request was simple. Both were urgent.