"I want to know when the United States plan to start respecting international law and stop using the UN Charter as a club": Mariam Thomson, ED, Centre for Constitutional Rights, Sep., 1992
October 24 will mark the 62nd anniversary of the UNO. It is high time we evaluated the functioning of this august body during the last six decades. Undoubtedly, the most cited achievements of the UNO are the use of peace-peeping forces which helped to stabilize and contain conflicts that could have spread throughout a particular region. Substantively speaking, however, the failings of the organization far outweigh its achievements. Ernest Haas's studies in this connection of 137 disputes referred to the UN between 1945 and 1984, have been supported by Brecher and Wikenfeld, through their empirical analysis of 251 international crises between 1945 and 1985. Haas claimed that the UN helped settle only 34 of the 137 cases and in only 11 cases was the role of the UN substantial.
Disappointment and frustration with the functioning of the UNO were felt long ago, when as early as June 1954 Henry Cabot Lodge tried to block the Security Council from discussing a resolution to send an investigation team to Guatemala where US sponsored bombing attacks had been made. The then Secretary General Hammarskjöld was so upset with the US that he remarked, "he might be forced to reconsider my present position in the UN" . In this context, Arsene Usher, the Ambassador of the Ivory Coast to the Security Council, once commented "When there was a dispute between two small powers, the dispute eventually disappeared. If there was a dispute between a small power and a great power, the small power disappeared. If there was a dispute between two great powers, the Security Council disappeared."
That was not all. No less a person than Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former Secretary General. During whose tenure the Iran-Iraq war and conflicts in Cyprus, Western Sahara, Central America, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan found the UNO helpless, spoke of his deep anxiety about international trends in his first report on the work of the UN in 1982. He asserted, "We have strayed far from the Charter in recent years, and we are at present embarked on an exceedingly dangerous course, one symptom of which is the crisis in the multilateral approach in international affairs and the concomitant erosion of the authority and status of world and regional inter-government organizations". He also remarked, "..time after time we have seen the Organization set aside or rebuffed."
Historically, from the very beginning, the UNO remained almost paralysed by the system of veto power available to the five founder permanent members of the Secretary General, the core decision making organ of the Organization. So much so that between 1946 and 1996, the veto power was used 238 times.
After the end of the cold war, the USA emerged as the only super power heralding a new era in the working of the UNO. Its cynical and domineering role soon became apparent. US leaders and others belonging to that country began making derogatory and humiliating statements about the Organization. For example, in a paper of 1996 titled, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", Richard Perle, Honorary Chairman of the Defense Policy Board of the USA, compared the UN to a sausage factory, saying, "Anyone who sees the sausage factory from the inside will not be able to eat the sausage for the rest of the life".
Importantly, a few examples make the US contempt of the UNO very clear. For instance, when the UNO voted its disapproval of the US invasion of Grenada of October 1983, President Reagan responded, "One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that has come before them where we are involved and it did not upset my breakfast at all (New York Times, November, 4, 1983). Similarly when the matter of repeated attacks on their country by Contras, with the active support of the Reagan Administration was taken by Nicaragua to the UNO, the USA thwarted it in the Security Council and the General Assembly because of its domination/veto. Nicaragua went to the World Court, but the USA withdrew its acceptance of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. And yet the Court found the US to be the aggressor. Moreover, regarding US invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989, the USA vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the invasion and also voted against a General Assembly resolution demanding the withdrawal of the "US armed invasion forces from Panama" and calling the invasion a "flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states (Rogue States by Noam Chomsky, India Research Press, New Delhi, p.232).
The UNO has never been so humiliated and hijacked in its history as happened in regard to invasions on Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Regarding the 1991 invasion, the alarming US unilateralism was confirmed by the UN Secretary General, Perez de Cueller in his address of April 16, 1991 to the European Parliament in Strasbourg thus: "The victory of the allied or coalition countries over Iraq is not all a victory for the UN, because this was not its war. It was not a UN war. General Schwarzkopf was not wearing a blue helmet." Also, Marek Goulding, the Under Secretary of the UN said, "In the Gulf war the allied forces were led by an American commander who received his orders from Washington and reported back to Washington" (Economic and Political Weekly, November 22, 1997, p.3015). Apparently, describing the US control of the UN, the British political commentator, Edward Pearce wrote: "the UN functions like an English medieval parliament: consulted, shown ceremonial courtesy, but mindful of divine prerogative, it mutters and gives assent" (Killing Hope by William Blum, Zed Books, London, 2003, p.327).
Apart from these observations, Noam Chomsky wrote, in relation to the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq: "What has happened at the UN is total contempt for the international system. In fact there are now calls from the Wall Street Journal, people in government and others to disband the UN" (Frontline, April 11, 2003). Here in our country, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, V.R.Krishna Iyer, expressed his anger thus, "The UN was made an impotent nincompoop". More recently, Malloch Brown, the Deputy Secretary General of the UN accused Washington of using the international body" almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool". He asserted that depending on the UN while tolerating "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping" was "simply not sustainable...You will lose the UN one way or another".
Considering the past ineffective track record of he UNO and criticism about its role, there are persistent and urgent demands for the revision of the UN Charter and changes in the structure and function of the organization, especially the Security Council. Different proposals in this regard have been made in different quarters. The high level panel tasked by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan made the most significant observation, namely, that the veto "has an anachronistic character that is unsuitable for the institution in an increasing democratic age. Undoubtedly, a provision that frequently paralysed and made this body ineffective (representing only about 29.3 percent of the world population) must be deleted.
Moreover, the permanent membership of the Security Council, the core decision-making organ of the UN, at present speaking for about 30 percent of the global population must be enlarged in consonance with the demographic, geographic and geo-political dispositions. At least two permanent members should be added from Africa, three from Asia and the Middle-east and two from Latin America.
Additionally, in keeping with the Declaration on adopted on October 24, 1995 on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the UN, and the spirit behind Articles15 and 17 of the UN Charter the work of the General assembly, the universal organ of the UN should be revitalized and given more teeth. Exploding the myth that it is merely a deliberative organ, and to make it more vibrant and dynamic organ conventions should be established to make the permanent members more sensitive to world opinion as reflected in the General Assembly and accept a measure of accountability to it. The very fact that amendments to the UN Charter are made by the General Assembly establishes its pre-eminence.
As pointed out by Salim Lone (Guardian News Papers Limited, 2006) the world's carefully constructed international system of maintaining peace and security, built around the UN Charter, is now on its last legs. However, for obvious reasons, the proposals for reforms as adumbrated above would face stiff opposition from the USA and some of the other permanent members of the Security Council. Therefore, as suggested by India's former Foreign Secretary, Muchkund Dubey, it is necessary to build a worldwide movement for UN reforms with the support of almost all the countries of the developing world, as many major powers as possible and the almost unanimous support of civil society organizations from all over the world. Unless, the requisite pressure for the reforms long overdue is generated, the vast majority of people, especially those lying in Asia, Africa and Latin America will continue to be denied their legitimate voice in the decision-making in the UN.
BN Arora
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