BENGALURU: Many who were in school during the late 90s and early 2000’s might be able to recollect how in History textbooks the chapter on the Second World War, was always followed up by the chapter on the United Nations – its origins and importance as an International peace – keeping organisation.
To provide a quick recap, the United Nations came into being as a replacement of the ineffective League of Nations, following WWII, in order to prevent another such conflict. The UN was established on 24 October 1945; at the time of its founding, the UN had 51 member states, now there are 193. It was established as an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international co-operation and to create and maintain international order. It was set – up under similar circumstances that had led to the formation of the League of Nations, following WWI.
In addition to maintaining peace and security, other important objectives of the UN include developing friendly relations among countries based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of people; achieving worldwide cooperation to solve international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems; respecting and promoting human rights; and serving as a platform for nations to resolve disputes through dialogue and other peaceful means.
The Security Council under the UN Charter has the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security and is one of the six important organs of the UN. The Security Council determines when and where a UN Peacekeeping operation should be deployed and plays a crucial role in peacekeeping.
Over the years of its existence, the UN has drafted and put in place several conventions, protocols and mechanisms to ensure international peace, human rights, and social, cultural, political and economic justice, progress and development. Some of the most important and well known being the Convention on Human Rights, the Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability; protocols against torture, human trafficking and environment.
The UN has also set up several mechanisms to ensure that signed and ratified conventions, treaties and protocols are implemented and no violations take place, the Universal Peer Review, Peacekeeping missions and setting up of enquiry commissions are also aimed towards ensuring these.
There is no denying that some of the mechanisms put in place by the United Nations are valuable, however, given the current volatile geopolitical climate and the challenges faced globally, the UN appears to be losing its teeth, becoming obsolete and incapable of doing what is was primarily set up to do – maintain international cooperation, order and peace.
Previously too, many have also raised questions regarding the relevance of it in the 21st century. Noting that the restrictive administrative structure, the permanent members of the Security Council themselves have sometimes prevented the UN from fully carrying out its mandates.
In the UN Security Council, it is required that disputes be settled in a peaceful manner and members are expected to refrain from the threat or use of contraventions of the UN. The UN’s inability to do so was exposed at the recently held Security Council meeting where USA and North Korea used it as a platform to threaten one another, rather than engaging in dialogue to resolve the ongoing conflict.
The UN faces several new challenges at present and in the times to come, as world over the rising of right wing, fascists and dictatorial forces can be seeing. Sanctions issued by the UN to North Korea have not deterred the country from testing hydrogen bombs; nor has the UN’s been able to prevent the massacre and prosecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar or stop the devastating war in Syria. Even in the case of members from the LGBT community being held in concentration camps in Chechnya, the UN’s actions were limited to issuing statements and condemning the incident.
Closer home, human rights violations continue to take place at an unprecedented rate in Kashmir, with several being blind and disabled by rubber pellets, usage of human shields, torture and army excesses. The UN has been unable to implement or enforce the Kashmir resolution, which lies in the hands of politically motivated agendas.
It appears as though the present role of the UN is limited to just reporting on violence, hunger, atrocities, and numbers of deaths, issuing sanctions and releasing statements of condemnation, executing nothing other than a routine practice and lacking any means for enforcement or holding states accountable.
With the world on the verge of experiencing another war, with consequences far more devastating and catastrophic than any of the previous, it is essential that the UN undergo reform urgently. Presently, all discussion around its reform revolves around discussions of new permanent members to the Security Council or restrictions on the use of the veto – neither of which will address deeper problems nor happen soon.
If the United Nations is to remain relevant and work towards its objective of ‘maintaining international cooperation, order and peace’, it needs to undergo reform, restructuring and become more aggressive in implementation, enforcement and holding those threatening world peace accountable for their actions.