The New Agenda for Peace from the Global South: Rebuilding Multilateral Security Governance

This paper develops the concept of a Global South Security Governance Deficit — the structural mismatch between where contemporary security risks are concentrated and where authority to define, prevent, govern and evaluate international security responses is located. Using primary United Nations, African Union, state and regional-organisation documents and a historically bounded qualitative documentary analysis, it advances a four-pillar model: Representation, Prevention, Regional Agency and Accountability. The paper shifts the analytical focus from representation to agency and uses the UN Secretary-General’s July 2023 A New Agenda for Peace as an important reference point rather than as its intellectual framework. It compares principal Security Council reform positions and examines cases including Sudan, the Sahel, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Ukraine. The framework distinguishes between normatively desirable, institutionally feasible, Charter-requiring and existing-practice reforms.