EDITORIAL: There was more than a small grain of truth in Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi's statement, during his video link address on the occasion of the United Nation's (UN') 75th anniversary, that "today the UN is derided as a 'talk shop' with its resolutions and decisions being flouted." Since he was speaking about how the occupied and oppressed people of the world have been let down by the world body, especially Kashmiris and Palestinians, his anger and sense of frustration was justified. For all its special sessions and landmark resolutions, the UN has not really been able to do anything at all for suffering people whose oppressors have powerful, veto-wielding friends in the Security Council. And since these occupations have not been settled during the entire existence of the organisation, instead their description has been altered and they are now called disputes, it is clear that expecting anything different at any point in the future is an exercise in futility. The fact of the matter is that the UN's own functioning mechanism makes it very easy for some countries to derail any progress on some of the more contentious issues, precisely because of their power to veto any and all resolutions, so there is weight in the argument that those who are seriously looking for somebody to help address these problems will have to search elsewhere.
But that is not to say, of course, that the UN has lost all relevance. As the foreign minister himself noted, it has "advanced arms controls, facilitated decolonisation, assisted in tackling climate change and addressing threats to the environment, aided in establishing a freer, more equal and rules based world, and worked to end hunger, disease and poverty through Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)." There's also no denying that it has set the international standard in facilitating refugees, prevented the US-USSR Cold War from turning too hot, helped end civil wars through effective and timely mediation, and also facilitated many hundreds of international treaties. Indeed the UN is indispensable simply because it has no alternative and it's just not possible, given the current international setting, to stitch together another organisation that reaches out across the world and covers so many different subject areas like conflict resolution, children's welfare and education, international peacekeeping, and meeting challenges of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; to name just a few.
Still the fact remains that with each passing year the need for UN reform becomes much more urgent. It simply can't go on reflecting the geopolitical realities of 1945 and not of today. The right of veto is still enjoyed only by a handful of countries that won a war 75 years ago. Japan and Germany, now the UN's second and third largest financial contributors, are still referred to by its Charter as "enemy states." And when they began demanding permanent seats at the Security Council, Italy's foreign minister was once forced to object by saying, "What's all this talk about Japan and Germany? We lost the war too." The need for reform was first recognised on record by former Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali in the early 1990s, when the Open-Ended Working Group of the General Assembly was formed to look into the issue, and he expected the process to be completed by the time of the organisation's 50th anniversary in 1995. Yet here we are at the 75th anniversary and still no closer to any form of meaningful overhaul. The biggest problem is that any amendment to the UN Charter requires two-thirds majority of the overall membership, which means 129 out of 193 countries in the General Assembly, and then further ratification from two-thirds of the member states. That, of course, also includes the permanent members whose powers many amendments would no doubt look to curtail, so it's not really very surprising that things haven't moved forward at all in this matter.
However, if a workable solution is not found soon then the UN won't just continue to disappoint people in Kashmir and Palestine but also risk becoming too irrelevant for an increasing number of countries to bother with time. If some of the decisions it is forced to take, which concern wars, sanctions, etc., make too many countries feel they are rushed through at the behest of the few countries that have more clout then it will be seen as an unrepresentative body and eventually be considered illegitimate. The clock is ticking and the UN, which has done so much to change the world, will now have to show that it can change itself as well.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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