After having just finished writing a post asking for your opinions on the UN, I thought it would be fair for me to expand a bit about what I don’t like about the UN. And the end of the article you’ll find some praise for the United Nations, just to be fair. Here’s what I already wrote earlier:
General Assembly resolutions are, by merit of not being binding, irrelevant. And the Security Council is, due to the veto-system, incapable of making decisions on many touchy subjects. Having to attain a majority of votes is usually such an arduous project that resolutions are watered down to a shadow of their original intentions and often achieve nothing.
Now, to move on.
The fact that member-states keep their full sovereignty is absolutely essential, of course. I don’t see the United States yielding an inch of sovereignty to the UN any time soon and I’m glad that it won’t. But it also means that resolutions that are, say, calling for a nation to stop nuclear research (such as Resolution 1718) or ones that call for a nation to disarm a terrorist group (such as Resolution 1701) can be ignored unhindered. Sometimes the offending nations get a slap on the wrist in the form of mild sanctions.
Since countries generally vote with their own political and economic agendas in mind, it’s often impossible to make any sort of resolution against an important trading nation succeed. Oil-rich, Middle Eastern states come to mind. At those rare occasions when the UNSC members do reach consensus on sanctions, they are usually either short-lived or circumvented - think of the Oil-for-Food(-and-Weapons) program. And since the UN usually shies away from threatening or engaging in military punishments, it was possible for a certain Iraqi ex-dictator to have ignored UNSC resolutions for 12 solid years. The ‘carrot-and-stick’ method doesn’t work very well if nobody believes you’ll use the stick.
Then there’s veto power. I’m happy that the US has it, otherwise anti-American and anti-Israeli resolutions would be accepted by the Securiy Council every single day. But I must admit that it seriously limits the possibilities of the Security Council. Veto-power basically means that any resolution against a nation, group or region important to China, France, Russia, the UK or the US, it fails immediately. A mere threat of a possible veto causes nations to radically rewrite the resolutions into the meaningless, impotent sheets of paper that I mentioned before.
The United Nations is a large and slow bureaucratic behemoth. Money vanishes into the bureaucracy and it takes far too long to change anything. If the UN can not change constantly with the times it needs to be replaced with something that can. It is simply unacceptable that the UN is still subsidizing the Military Staff Committee to meet every fortnight while that body has been dormant for the last 58 years. I also notice that the Trusteeship Council, officially inactive since 1994, still has a budget, a staff, offices and a huge auditorium.
The UN stance on human rights is a joke. Having Libya chair a commission on human rights removes any kind of credibility such a body might have had. Having human rights issues decided on by a majority vote of some of the world’s worst offenders is a very, very sad thing. Throughout its existance, the commission continuously condemned the US and Israel of violations of human rights while completely ignoring atrocities in many African, Asian, South American and Middle Eastern nations. The formation of the new United Nations Human Rights Council is slightly better, but not by much. The council aimed to keep out nations that don’t “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights”. Last I checked, though, China, Cuba, Saudi-Arabia, Tunesia, Pakistan and Russia are not countries renowned for their tireless upholding of human rights.
General anti-American and especially anti-Israeli bias. The list is too long and deserves a post of its own, but a good summary can be found, for a change, on Wikipedia. That least is quite extensive, but I want to add that Israel is still the only member-state in the world that is not allowed to ever sit on the Security Council and that Israel alone is barred from membership in most committees. It has recently been allowed to enter some committees, after over 50 years of being excluded from all of them, but it’s still not enough. I doubt that a future Palestinian state would face the same restrictions.
UN Peacekeepers, if they are sent at all, are often sent with disastrously limited mandates, which have caused the Blue Helmets to be completely ineffectual in areas such as Rwanda, Somalia, Lebanon and Bosnia, sparking tragedies such as the Srbrenica Massacre. Peacekeepers also seem to cause many scandals, such as the prostitution scandal in Cambodia, the killing spree scandal in Haiti and of course the rape, pedophilia and human trafficking scandal in Congo.
While I certainly have more bones to pick with the United Nations, these are my main problems with it. If I haven’t quenched your thirst for UN wrongdoings, I suggest you take a look at DAHmich’s or G.T. Armstrong’s takes on the matter.
Finally, I want to say that I do respect what the UN set out to be. When Roosevelt and Churchill envisioned the United Nations, they had admirable goals, which I support. I also think the United Nations has made great steps towards eradicating hunger sheltering children and teaching them how to read, supplying water and protecting our natural and cultural heritage, to name but a few. I hope that one day, The United Nations will be a body that truly allows nation-states to work out their differences peacefully, one that will make the world a better place for future generations. I pray that it’s possible, but at this moment I don’t see how.
So, those are my thoughts. What are yours?
Popularity: 54% [?]
0 Responses to “What's Wrong With the UN?”