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| Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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World
without the UN
by Lionel Wijesiri The 60th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco falls today. After one decade and half a century, perhaps it is time to take a look at where this organisation has been, where it is headed, and whether or not we want to go there with it. Looking back over the last 60 years, how certain can we be that the UN's purpose is more consistent with the way things have gone? Have we had peace in any one of those 60 years? Has the verbal goose-stepping that constitutes discussion of issues in the UN forestalled conflict? During the years that have passed, the climate for international cooperation has been unstable, ranging from the iciest days of the Cold War, through years in the 70's of over-ambitious belief that a majority of nations in the General Assembly could rule the world by resolutions, to a virtual freeze on globalism in the early 80's. The late periods of 'perestroika' opened up for a new, more constructive era, and the beginning of the nineties was marked by widespread optimism. In recent years, the UN has been overburdened with work and its progress in various areas has been uneven. This has led to its being judged, justly or unjustly, more by its failures than by its successes. This brings us right to the most important question, what is the future of the UN? All in all, can it serve the world's peoples or the interests of a few? Before we answer the question, we need to go back to the history 63 years. Already in the midst of World War II, in January 1942, twenty-six allies against the axis powers signed a Declaration by the United Nations. And in April 1945, while the war was still raging, the UN founders met in San Francisco to produce the UN Charter, which was signed by 50 nations in June, six weeks before the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and forced the unconditional surrender of Japan. The UN was founded mainly to prevent the recurrence of a large-scale war and to protect weaker states against aggression. Representing the interests of the whole world population was a welcome side effect, but democracy was not integral to the UN's purpose; the word 'democracy' did not even appear in the UN Charter. That was six decades ago. Today the UN is a multi-purpose, universal organisation to which effectively any nation can belong. The UN commits members to the non-use of force and the peaceful settlement of disputes. Its central purpose is to maintain international peace and security, but also to develop friendly relations among nations; to address economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems; and to promote respect for universal human rights. Its six principal organs are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the Secretariat. These organs are an umbrella to dozens of other UN agencies and autonomous bodies. Who is in charge of the UN? Is the Organisation accountable to the citizens of its close to 200 member states; or only to their governments; or to the Group of 77 (which has grown to some 130 developing and emerging member states); or to the five permanent members of the Security Council; or to the sole remaining superpower, the United States; or not to states at all, but to powerful non-state actors, for example large multinational corporations? The sad truth is, UN's Security Council doesn't count for much when nations contemplate war. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 1945 there have been 26 international wars, with total deaths estimated at 3.5 million. Only three of those wars had Security Council authorization, including the recent conflict in Afghanistan; the largest, the 1950-53 Korean conflict. Since 1945, the United States has sent troops into other countries with the prospect of combat more than 50 times; in the great majority, no Security Council approval was either asked or given. Past U.S. interventions without U.N. authorisation include Vietnam; Haiti and Kosovo during the Clinton administration; Panama under the first President Bush; Grenada under President Reagan; and the ill-fated attack on Iran when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In fact, from Harry Truman to the present, every U.S. President has intervened militarily abroad without the Security Council's blessing. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has undertaken at least one war without the council's permission or endorsement. China attacked India in 1962 without a Security Council resolution, and again without a resolution attacked Vietnam in 1979. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary without going to the Security Council. Britain and France invaded Egypt in 1956 without informing, much less consulting with, the Security Council. More recently, both Britain and France have sent troops to Kosovo and various African destinations without council advice or consent. What went wrong? Why couldn't the UN live up to its ideals and expectations? In part - because the Super powers ensured that none of their supreme national interests would be compromised by the UN acting in accordance with international law and political morality. The Charter itself contained too many concessions to the Super Powers such as all major actions of the UN have to be sanctioned by the Security Council of 15 members in which 10 would be elected and five would sit permanently. Not merely sit permanently; they were handed over the Veto power. If they voted negatively to any proposal the idea got killed then and there. The UN was never perfect. While the great debates at U.N. headquarters in New York makes the headlines, workers of the various agencies like UNICEF, UNESCO and WHO continue their efforts to aid backward and underprivileged areas unheralded. Famine, disease, malnutrition, and living standards have already been markedly improved by teams of workers from the U.N. They render not only direct assistance, but train teams of natives to teach their own people. A world without the UN is inconceivable for the multiple millions of refugees, children, hunger-stricken, poor, conflict-devastated and marginalised humans whose needs are being met daily through its many organisations and specialised arms. But we should never forget that the UN is not merely a material aid and service delivery store. Its original and most important purpose is to preserve world peace. As long as the international state system and its underpinning, state sovereignty, remain in place, the UN is likely to remain as it is today: not a quasi-government, but a place where sovereign states can negotiate their interests. And, I believe, the veto power of the Big Five is likely to prevent any change in the Charter in foreseen future. |
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