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The United Nations is broken.
For decades, this sentiment has echoed through the halls of academia, activist circles, and even the corridors of power in global capitals. The institution designed to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war finds itself increasingly paralyzed, unable to effectively address modern crises ranging from climate change and artificial intelligence to outright conflicts involving its most powerful members.
At the heart of this paralysis lies a structural feature established in 1945: the veto power held by the five permanent members (the P5) of the UN Security Council. But can the UN be fixed? And if so, what is the safest and most effective route to changing its foundational constitution, the UN Charter?
Recently, an urgent conversation took place among four leading voices in international relations, activism, and diplomacy. This was an episode of Project Save the World’s video series, hosted by retired University of Toronto professor Metta Spencer. The panel examined the viability of invoking Article 109 of the UN Charter—a constitutional mechanism designed to trigger a general conference to review and amend the Charter.
Joining Spencer were Winston Langley, a retired professor of international relations and former provost at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Douglas (Doug) Roche, a former Canadian Senator and Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament; and Robin Collins, a prominent activist, scholar, and UN expert.
The conversation revealed a shared motivation to improve global governance, but it also exposed deep strategic and philosophical divides over how to achieve it. Here is a breakdown of the debate, the history behind it, and the position statement of each participant about the Article 109 amendment conference idea.
To understand the debate over Article 109, one must first understand the origin of the veto.
Winston Langley provided the historical context, tracing the veto back to the Dumbarton Oaks Conference of 1944 and the Yalta Conference of February 1945.
At Yalta, the major Allied powers—the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—agreed that the five permanent members of the proposed Security Council would possess a veto. The rationale was self-preservation: the UN would never be able to act against any of these countries if they felt their core interests were threatened. All five are internationally recognized nuclear-weapon states.
“Once the states got hold of the proposed Charter in San Francisco, they began to take exception to the idea of the veto,” Langley explained.
Countries such as Australia, Canada, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Iran led the opposition, accurately predicting the gridlock the veto would cause.
Sensing the mounting pressure from smaller states and early civil society groups, the major powers made a concession. They agreed to include Article 109 in the Charter. This article stipulated that if a general conference to review the Charter had not been held within ten years, the threshold for calling one would be lowered. It would require only a simple majority in the General Assembly and the vote of any seven members of the Security Council—bypassing the P5 veto solely for the purpose of convening the conference.
The ten-year mark passed in 1955. The Cold War made the political climate “inauspicious,” as the permanent members claimed. Subsequent efforts in the 1960s and the post-Cold War 1990s stalled, often because of U.S. opposition in a unipolar world.
Today, however, a growing movement known as the Article 109 Coalition, of which both Langley and Roche are members, is working to activate this constitutional mechanism. While all four participants agreed that the current state of the United Nations is untenable and that the veto is a deeply undemocratic flaw, their positions on the wisdom, timing, and mechanics of an Article 109 Charter Review Conference varied significantly.
Position: Strongly supports an Article 109 Charter Review Conference as the path to comprehensive, transformative reform. WINSTON LANGLEY: THE VISIONARY ADVOCATE
Position: Strongly supports an Article 109 Charter Review Conference as the path to comprehensive, transformative reform.
Professor Langley represents the driving intellectual force behind the Article 109 Coalition. He views the invocation of Article 109 not as a legal trick, but as a moral imperative to correct the historical weaknesses of the UN Charter.
Langley’s vision for the conference goes far beyond merely addressing the veto. He advocates a sweeping modernization of the United Nations to address contemporary global realities. His proposed agenda includes:
Environmental Stewardship: Recognizing the Amazon and Congo rainforests as the “lungs of the Earth,” giving the global community a role in their protection rather than leaving them exclusively under national jurisdiction.
Outer Space: Regulating outer space to prevent exclusive claims by individuals, corporations, or individual nations.
Security Council Expansion: Expanding the Security Council, but without creating additional permanent members. Instead, he proposes renewable six-year terms, arguing that “behavior should be rewarded” rather than allowing countries to inherit permanent power regardless of their commitment to the Charter’s purposes.
International Human Rights Court: Establishing a court whose decisions directly affect individuals, fostering a greater sense of global citizenship while reducing the influence of extreme nationalism.
Langley acknowledges the historical reality that, without the veto, the Soviet Union (and likely the United States) would never have joined the United Nations. However, he believes the time has come to overcome its long-term consequences, supporting mechanisms such as the Uniting for Peace resolution to empower the General Assembly when the Security Council is paralyzed.
Position: Supports the Article 109 Coalition and advocates structural reforms such as a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to address modern existential threats.
As the host of these discussions, Metta Spencer often remains neutral on the issues under debate. In the interest of balance, she specifically invited Robin Collins because she knew he was generally skeptical of the Article 109 initiative and believed it was important to include that perspective.
Nevertheless, because she regards the United Nations as fundamentally “broken,” Spencer made no attempt to hide her view that Article 109 could help repair it.
Spencer focuses on expanding the scope of global governance to tackle issues the founders in 1945 could never have imagined, such as artificial intelligence and the worsening climate crisis.
“I hear people talking about the importance of having the United Nations now competent to deal with AI and with climate change and such other global threats,” she noted.
Her “hobby horse,” as she affectionately calls it, is the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly. She wants an amendment process that incorporates this idea, giving direct voice to the citizens of the world rather than only national governments.
For Spencer, the Article 109 Coalition is a vital tool for mobilizing public opinion and creating the political pressure needed to encourage states to act. She is seeking “a strong vision of what has to happen to get us out of this horrible mess.”
Position: Supports the ultimate goals of reform and is a member of the Coalition, but strongly warns against the timing, fearing that an amendment conference held now could destroy the UN entirely.
Douglas Roche brings the sobering perspective of a veteran diplomat. While he shares Langley’s passion and Spencer’s desire for a Parliamentary Assembly, his primary concern is the survival of the institution itself.
Roche’s position is rooted in the belief that the United Nations is currently facing an unparalleled threat to its existence. He points to a “torrent of abuse,” funding problems, attacks by the U.S and the complicating factors of NATO expansion.
“We have to keep the United Nations from being destroyed, from being completely overridden. That is object and goal number one today,” Roche stated emphatically.
Because the global political climate is so toxic—what he refers to as the “poison in the air”—Roche fears that aggressively pushing an Article 109 conference to strip the P5 of their veto could provoke a fatal backlash. He warned against “too abrupt an action that could lead to a more fractured UN than we have now.” He fears a “rupture” that could shatter the fragile international order.
Instead of immediate structural upheaval, Roche advocates a more gradual transition from a “culture of war to a culture of peace.” He supports the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s efforts to slowly build the framework for a parliamentary assembly, viewing it as a pragmatic step that major powers might eventually accept as inevitable.
His ultimate advice to the world is conservative in the truest sense:
“Hang on to the Charter of the United Nations. That’s our anchor. And if we stay with it, we can build on it and modify it as we move along.”
Position: Supports reform but is highly skeptical that Article 109 can bypass the veto. He advocates using and stretching existing Charter provisions instead.
Robin Collins provided the most critical legal and strategic challenge to the Article 109 proposal. While he agrees that the veto is a “stench” and an undemocratic element, he pointed out a major constitutional hurdle: although Article 109 allows a conference to be called without a P5 veto, any actual amendments produced by that conference would still require ratification by two-thirds of UN member states, including all five permanent members of the Security Council.
“There cannot be an escape from the veto in Article 109,” Collins bluntly reminded the panel.
A conference could be held, but the United States, Russia, China, France, or the United Kingdom could simply veto the resulting changes.
Because of this reality, Collins argues that focusing all energy on an amendment conference might be a misallocation of effort. Instead, he proposes a strategic, incremental approach using tools already available within the UN Charter:
Enforcing Abstentions: Collins highlighted that under Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, Security Council members are technically required to abstain from voting on conflict resolutions if they are parties to that conflict. He suggests extending this logic to Chapter VII (enforcement actions), which could effectively neutralize a combatant P5 member’s veto without requiring a constitutional amendment.
The 2022 Veto Initiative: Collins praised the recent UN resolution requiring the General Assembly to convene and debate within ten days whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council. The country exercising its veto must explain its decision to the General Assembly, which still cannot override the veto. He views this as a successful unanimous step toward increasing accountability and raising the political cost of using the veto.
Democratic State Behavior: Ultimately, Collins suggested that the Charter itself might be sufficient “if all member states were democratic and acted according to the principles of the UN Charter.” His focus is on changing state behavior and building common security approaches rather than betting everything on a high-stakes constitutional convention.
The conversation between Spencer, Langley, Roche, and Collins perfectly encapsulates the modern dilemma of global governance.
On one side (Langley and Spencer), there is a belief that the UN’s structural flaws are actively preventing the world from solving existential crises. The house is on fire, and the fire extinguishers are locked behind a glass case that only five people have the key to. For them, breaking the glass through Article 109 is a moral and practical necessity.
On the other side (Roche and Collins), there is a profound fear that the international community has lost the diplomatic capacity to negotiate a new settlement. Roche fears the house will collapse entirely if they start knocking down load-bearing walls during a hurricane. Collins points out that the people holding the keys still have the legal right to stop the glass from being replaced.
Despite their disagreements over the mechanism and timing of Charter reform, a consensus emerged around the idea of a UN Parliamentary Assembly.
All participants agreed that the UN suffers from a democratic deficit, relying entirely on the executive branches of national governments. Introducing a body of parliamentarians representing people, not just national governments, would fundamentally alter the UN’s relationship with the citizens of the world.
For Spencer, these global legislators would be selected not by electing politicians, but through the sortition of ordinary citizens, similar to how juries are chosen, and would meet mainly through videoconferencing.
Roche, on the other hand, assumes that delegates to the Parliamentary Assembly would be elected from current members of existing national parliaments.
For Spencer, the Parliamentary Assembly is a goal worth pursuing through an amendment conference. For Roche, it represents a pragmatic evolution already gaining traction through the Inter-Parliamentary Union. For Langley, it aligns with his vision of global cosmopolitanism. For Collins, it is an initiative that could potentially be achieved without necessarily triggering the risks of the Article 109 amendment process.
As the conversation drew to a close, the panelists recognized that the legal and structural debates over the UN Charter cannot be separated from the geopolitical reality of the world.
“The first preeminent issue,” Doug Roche noted, “is to get the poison out of the air at the present time in order for us to make some progress.”
Whether that poison is the resurgence of extreme nationalism, the violation of international law by major powers, or the erosion of democratic norms, it makes the delicate work of global constitution-building incredibly dangerous.
The Article 109 Coalition faces a monumental task. It must not only build a global grassroots movement demanding change but also navigate the complex legal realities of the veto and the profound anxieties of diplomats who fear losing the only global anchor currently available.
Can the UN be fixed? Winston Langley believes we have the tools. Metta Spencer believes we have the motivation. Robin Collins believes we have alternative routes. But, as Doug Roche warns, we must be careful not to sink the ship while trying to patch the hull.
The debate over Article 109 is not just a legal argument; it is a struggle over the future of human cooperation itself.