Monday, January 14, 2008
Mr. Ban Ki-moon and the Future of the
United Nations
[The]
"recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable
rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice
and peace in the world."
Preamble- United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
"Today's human rights violations
are the causes of tomorrow's conflicts."
Mary Robinson, former United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights
"The United States...simply
doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent,
which it regards as impotent and irrelevant."
Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate for
Literature
"The
United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United
States, formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says
that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the
U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but
a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. —Regarding
Iraq,...the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
Benjamin
Ferencz, Chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
A new Secretary-General
has presided over the United Nations for more than a
year, but most people ignore this fact. They can be forgiven, because very
little has resulted from the October 13, 2006 election by
the 192-member United Nations General Assembly
of a shy South Korean diplomat, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, as the U.N.
Secretary-General. On January 1, 2007, Mr. Ban
Ki-moon took office as the eighth U. N. Secretary-General, succeeding Mr. Kofi
Annan, for a first term lasting until December
31, 2011. He was a compromise candidate
among seven candidates for the post, and he succeeded in avoiding a veto from any of the five permanent members of
the Security Council. He was particularly popular with the Bush-Cheney
administration because, in his capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, he had pushed his own government to send South Korean troops to Iraq.
We should recall that one of the first
moves by Mr. Ban Ki-moon, soon after he took office, was to reverse a
long-standing United Nations opposition to the death penalty as a human rights
concern. Indeed, he condoned the death penalty that had been handed down on
the deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi High Tribunal, stating, "The issue of
capital punishment is for each and every member State to decide."
Mr. Ban Ki-moon has also been criticized for appointing a large number of his fellow South Korean
nationals to key U. N. posts, and for showing nepotism in
appointing his own
son-in-law to a key United Nations post in Iraq.
It remains to be seen if Mr. Ban Ki-moon has the vision, the credibility and the moral authority
to bring forward the reforms that the United Nations urgently needs, if it is
going to avoid the fate of irrelevancy that beset the League of Nations. So far, the
only reforms the new Secretary-General has espoused have been minor
administrative arrangements—and even those were contested—such as splitting the U. N. peacekeeping operation into one
department handling operations and another handling arms. His proposal to
combine the political affairs and disarmament department was even rejected
outright.
What the United Nations needs is more than simply
shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It needs a fundamental
structural reorganization if it is to play the role it was assigned originally
in 1945, that is to say to promote international cooperation and to maintain international peace and security. This overall
goal can only be achieved if the United Nations has the legitimacy and the
means to prevent wars and to promote human rights throughout the world.
But, what should the Secretary-General, with the
support of member states, do? —Logically, Mr. Ban Ki-moon should begin by
declaring that the post World War II era is over and that the main obstacle to
any substantial reform of the U. N. should be removed. There is, indeed, a
relic of the Second
World War which is still in place, It is the veto power
that the five winning nations (USA, Russia, China,
U.K. and France) gave themselves after WWII in the functioning of the
U. N. Security Council. Mr. Ban Ki-moon should plead with the five
above countries to show magnanimity and, while retaining their permanent status
at the Security Council as an historical given, convince them that they should
voluntarily forgo the antiquated veto that
paralyses any attempt at reforming the United Nations and
at making it a functional organization. Presently, because of the veto feature,
each time one of the five permanent member states is involved in a crisis or in an international dispute, the Security
Council and the entire United Nations are paralyzed.
The Secretary-General should tackle the task of
improving the U. N.'s democratic legitimacy and operational efficiency
through fundamental reforms of the Security Council
and the General Assembly.
Both bodies are antiquated and ill adapted to fulfill their tasks.
First, in a true 21st century spirit, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should better reflect the new demographic,
political, and economic realities that have emerged over the last sixty years.
There is a wide consensus that political and economic powerhouses such as
Japan, India, Brazil and Germany, the G4 nations, should join the
current five permanent members in the Security Council. These countries are
large and stable democracies and economic giants that should not be left out of
the world decision process.
With the current ten countries that join the Council on a regional basis, in a rotating system, for
two-years terms, after having been elected by the General
Assembly, a new 19-member Security Council would remain small enough to be
efficient. As a substitute to the present veto enjoyed by a few members, a
three-quarters majority rule could be implemented in order to guarantee that
the Council's decisions reflect at all times a worldwide consensus. This would
mean that the decisions and measures, couched in the form of resolutions, and
which are arrived at by the Council, would have to be supported by at least
fifteen members. Since all Members of the United
Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council,
under the U. N. Charter, such a requirement would seem to be necessary if
the U. N. actions are to carry a wide acceptance.
One big obstacle to enlarging the Security
Council comes from the insistence of some African countries to have a permanent
representative of their continent on the Council. While this is a most
legitimate claim in principle, it is a difficult one to achieve in practice.
First, there is no consensus in Africa about which candidate among three
possible candidates (Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa) should be elected. And
second, even among the later, none seems to meet the requirements of long-term
political stability and economic dynamism and leadership that one would expect
from a permanent member. It would be most unfortunate if the movement to reform
the U. N. were to be paralyzed because of these facts.
Presently, the presidency of the Security
Council rotates among the members of the Council monthly, in alphabetical
order. This leaves the U. N. Secretary-General
somewhat out of the loop, even though he should be seen as the main
spokesperson for the United Nations. An obvious reform would be to designate
the Secretary-General as the ex officio
presiding officer of the Council. He would then cease to be regarded as simply
a dignified bureaucrat who heads the U. N. Secretariat, rather than being the main spokesperson for the
whole United Nations.
While it is true that the
U.N. is not a world government, but rather a forum for the world's 192 sovereign states to
debate issues and determine collective courses of action, this does not mean
that it should not improve its democratic legitimacy, especially as the world
has become more and more globalized and is in need of new institutions to
reflect this new reality.
Presently the General Assembly is composed of all member nations, and each one of
them has an equal number of representatives designated by their respective
governments. This world parliament, which meets annually from September to
December, has important responsibilities, such as to oversee the budget of the U. N., appoint the non-permanent members
to the Security Council, and receive reports
from other bodies of the U. N.
—Such important issues have to be decided by a two-thirds majority of
those members present and voting. —The General Assembly can also adopt
resolutions on other subjects and this then only requires a simple majority.
—Each member country has one vote. —On the other hand, such
resolutions are not binding on the member states and the Security Council has
no obligation to implement them, with the consequence that in most cases, they
remain pious wishes. We can therefore say that the General Assembly de facto functions as a limited world parliament, but only for
governments.
A possible reform designed to raise the
democratic profile and prestige of the General Assembly among people worldwide
would be to assign four representatives to each member country and to encourage
countries to have half of them, or better still, all of them, elected in
country-wide general elections. This could be the most important step to insure
that the United Nations be seen as a truly representative international body.
On the other hand, since there is no
proportional representation in the U. N., and to insure that its decisions
are made and supported by a large worldwide consensus, and especially to avoid
a potentially disastrous structural North-South split, a
three-quarters majority or even an eighty-percent decision
rule could be mandated for important decisions.
Presently, because of the one state, one vote
system, it is theoretically possible for small states comprising just eight
percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote. No
large country would ever accept to place its fate and interests in the hands of
such a small group of people.
This, of course, is an incomplete list of
issues and ideas about how to proceed to reform the United Nations. You are
most welcome to add your own views to this important subject.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University
of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'
Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
Posted, Monday, January 14, 2008, at 5:30 am
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