Top body must decide
Purpose or membership, which is more important?
UN Charter deeply flawed
By Mostafa Shirmohammadi
Staff writer
Any human creation, and by extension, any organization, is created for a reason. It has a “raison d’etre,” if you will. This is most likely reflected in a written piece of paper, most likely called its charter, constitution, or code. If it’s an international organization of the highest order, with grand ambitions, its charter will even be made public for all, including its members for generations to know.
Should the need arise, it will branch out and create new subsidiaries or organs to delegate certain tasks. As such, these branching organs have even more specific and pronounced reasons to be. They are formed to handle responsibilities that are too narrow to be given due attention by the whole organization.
I can’t think of any international organization that is bigger and more renowned than the United Nations, and I suppose neither can you. Its membership now extends to almost all states in the world. According to Article 1 (1) of the UN Charter, the most important raison d’etre or “purpose” of the UN is as follows:
“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.”
That uses a lot of words to say that the UN is a guardian of peace in the world. If it deems that peace is breached somewhere and principles of justice and international law have been violated, and its non-binding resolutions are being scuffed by the violators, it looks to its enforcement arm, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to issue binding resolutions to member states. Then, if the UNSC resolutions are still ignored, the council can authorize military intervention or impose sanctions. So, out of the UN’s six principal organs, the Security Council is charged with the gravest task.
One can’t really expect the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to fulfill the aforementioned purpose since its resolutions are non-binding, and war criminals have no reason to listen to what is essentially a rebuke. Anticipating this, the UN created the Security Council. However, to see the UNSC fail so miserably as of late in achieving its intended purpose, makes one think that either the UN should take out Article 1 (1) or make some fundamental changes to Article 27 of its charter, where it gives five of the council’s permanent members the mind-boggling power to veto the votes of other UNSC members, even on matters that are clear violations of peace.
Case in point, Israel, not just in the most recent war on Gaza, but almost from the start of its existence. Time and time again, Israel performed “acts of aggression or other breaches of peace,” but the UNSC’s record in stopping its crimes has been, at best, spotty, too little too late, and in support of Israel’s expansionist plans. The reason: the veto power of the US, and rarely the UK and France in the UNSC.
Since 1945, 46 UNSC draft resolutions have been vetoed by the US and two by Russia and China. However, the two draft resolutions that were vetoed by Russia and China were extremely one-sided, pro-Israeli efforts by the US during the recent war.
Emboldened by the seemingly unwavering support of the US, Israel miscalculated and stepped outside the line a little too much, even for Washington’s taste. As a result, the Obama administration abstained once and only once from voting on UNSC Resolution 2334, which demanded an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (Al-Quds), enabling the measure to pass. It was a stunning departure from the longstanding US policy, notwithstanding the 1972 draft resolution, which was brief and generic.
It’s important to note that the United States did not stop at vetoing UNSC draft resolutions to protect its ally, Israel. Washington conceived the Uniting for Peace mechanism during the Korean War to end-run the Soviet veto and supported its use for several decades thereafter. But interestingly, after the Uniting for Peace mechanism began to be used as a way to sanction Israel notwithstanding US vetoes at the Security Council, the United States concluded that the mechanism should be relegated to the dustbin of history, where it remained unused for 30 years.
There’s much to be said about what the Security Council decides to vote and act on, but such problems pale next to the counter-intuitive, borderline medieval rule of giving five members veto powers. It’s not like this hasn’t been pointed out, either. Repeatedly describing the United Nations’ charter as “flawed,” the then president of Iran Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei told the UNGA in 1987, “The veto power and the permanent membership of the UNSC are two discriminations that must be eliminated.”
To illustrate another one of the UN flaws that can be exploited by any rich nation, one need not look further than the famous confession of its chief. Former secretary-general of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon publicly acknowledged that even when the veto is not an issue, the council and the UN are limited in their abilities to fulfill their purpose. Ban admitted that he removed the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen from a blacklist of child killers — 72 hours after it was published — due to a financial threat to defund United Nations programs.
Currently, the United Nations, in general, and the United Nations Security Council, in particular, have strayed too far from their purpose and been characterized by a series of ineffective condemnations and calls for restraint. Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza should be a wake-up call to nations around the world to shake up some things in the UN Charter. Getting rid of the discriminatory, open-to-abuse power of veto sounds like the first logical step. The veto power is so medieval in nature that not even the Big Five, who wield it, dare or are able to justify it to the whole world anymore.