The UN at 60
The
good news is that the UN is still alive
and kicking 60 years after its founding
in 1945. The bad news is that its credibility
is not doing all too well.
In the wake of World War II, the UN
ostensibly was set up as a brake against
jingoistic ambitions. Of late, it has
been more of a facilitator of the actions
of the big powers.
Over its 60 years, the UN has participated
in a number of historical decisions.
On November 29, 1947, its General Assembly
passed, by a vote of 33 in favor and
13 against (with Pakistan and India
both voting against) Resolution No.
181 for the partitioning of Palestine,
which led to the creation of Israel
on May 14, 1948. Twenty years later,
the UN Security Council passed Resolution
242 in the wake of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli
war, urging Israel to withdraw from
its occupied territories.
The UN also played a positive role on
Kashmir, especially so, when the UN
Commission for India and Pakistan passed
its resolution on January 5, 1949, urging
a “free and impartial” plebiscite
for the people of Kashmir under UN auspices.
It is another matter that its implementation
was impeded.
One of the blackest chapters in UN history
came in July 1995 when lily-livered
Dutch UN troops bolted from the UN safe
haven Bosnian town of Srebrenica and
allowed the Serbs to butcher the Muslim
townspeople. A year before, in Rwanda,
nearly 1 million Tutsis were slaughtered
in 100 days by the Hutus, with the UN
lifting nary a finger.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s
uninspired leadership has contributed
to the UN’s image. He did little
to impede the much-trumpeted invasion
and occupation of Iraq in March 2003,
and recent revelations that Kofi’s
son profited from the UN’s Oil-for-Food
program for Iraq do not depict the UN
Secretary General in a flattering light.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution observed
recently that the United Nations “has
fallen far short of the larger promise
its founders envisioned” and has
“become a deeply troubled institution,
unsure of its future and diminished
by a disturbing array of missteps, scandals,
and shortcomings.”
UN reform has become a mission of the
US and its controversial new UN ambassador,
John Bolton. On July 4, 2005, Kofi Annan
announced the establishment of a UN
Democracy Fund, an idea first articulated
and proposed by President Bush in a
speech before the UN General Assembly
last fall. The fund, which would receive
$10 million from the US, and to which
contributions have been pledged by 26
countries, would provide assistance
on elections, democratic governance,
and anti-corruption efforts.
The declaration adopted during September
2005 is indicative of the discrepancies
and challenges facing the UN at age
60. Despite Kofi Annan’s protestations
to the contrary, the New York summit
– the largest ever gathering of
presidents and prime ministers intended
to kick-off the UN’s 60th year
with a blockbuster agreement –
instead, according to the Irish Times
of September 17, became “a fiasco”.
The paper reported “a widespread
feeling . . . that most of Annan’s
initial proposals had been watered down
almost to the point of being meaningless”.
He was unable to get the UN to agree
on a definition of terrorism. Draft
language on goals to reduce poverty
and disease were characterized as “weak
and watery” and Kofi’s attempt
to replace the discredited Human Rights
Commission with a Human Rights Council
“ended up with little more than
a new title, with no guarantee that
the new council would not continue to
be dominated by gross human rights abusers
who gave the commission such a bad name.”
Kofi Annan himself termed it “a
real disgrace” that the statement
failed to mention nuclear nonproliferation
and disarmament by the major nuclear
powers. The Washington Post pointed
out that enlargement of the Security
Council had consumed members for months,
but negotiations became so polarized
that the final document only expresses
its support for efforts to make the
Security Council “more broadly
representative”.
The turbulent post-9/11 era of the 21st
century presents the UN with two key
challenges. These have to be credibly
met if the UN is to sustain itself as
an acceptable arbiter in the maintenance
of a minimum world order.
First, the UN has to shed the widening
perception that it functions as an international
legal tool for furthering the interests
of international power politics.
Second, it is essential that its central
governing body become more representative.
Excluding from the UN Security Council
any Muslim representation with veto
power is both inexcusable and untenable,
and is a slap at the world’s largest
and fastest growing faith.
In a fast changing world, with the ‘shock
and awe’ of big power supremacy
gradually eroding, the need for recognition
of new facts is imperative along with
the necessity of genuine and just reforms
at the UN – reforms that reflect
the interests and concerns of the majority
of UN members.
