The Hindu : Time to strengthen the U.N.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 02, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Time to strengthen the U.N. — I

By Muchkund Dubey

What is needed is to resurrect and update the U.N. This will call for restoring to it the Charter functions it has lost.

MANY IN this country and the world over have questioned the relevance and significance of the United Nations in the context of the Iraq war. The United States condemned the U.N. as irrelevant simply because it did not authorise it to wage a war against Iraq. A vast majority of nations, individuals and movements lamented the U.N.'s inability to prevent the war. The epithet of irrelevance and impotence were attributed to the U.N. despite the fact that, with the exception of a brief interregnum of 3-4 years, throughout its existence it has not been able to live up to its mandate in Chapter VII of the Charter — to prevent breach of peace, threat to peace and acts of aggression.

In areas other than security, with the onset in the early 1980s of the Reagan-Thatcher era of minimising the role of the state both at the national and international level, a deliberate, concerted and well-planned campaign was spearheaded mainly by the `haves' of the world, to emasculate and enfeeble the inter-state system represented by the U.N. Their mission was nearly completed by the beginning of the 1990s, though the process of the erosion of the role and functions of the U.N. is continuing.

The U.N. has ceased to be "a centre for harmonising the actions of nations". The economically advanced countries have long succeeded in putting themselves outside the pale of U.N.'s scrutiny and surveillance. They no longer allow it to direct its searchlight on their macro-economic policies. Hardcore economic issues relating even to the developing countries, such as financial flows, interest rate and exchange rate fluctuations, inflation, external indebtedness etc., are no longer allowed to be discussed within the forums of the U.N. This is in contrast to the position till the beginning of the 1970s when ideas such as trade preferences for developing countries, commodity price stabilisation, various compensatory financing facilities under the IMF, issue of Special Drawing Rights by the IMF, target for the flow of financial resources, debt amelioration or forgiveness were all advanced and agreed upon within the U.N.

Today, discussions in the U.N. are confined to the domestic economic and social issues of developing countries. Among these, there is almost an exclusive concentration of how these countries can give greater play to free market forces and liberalise the external sectors of their economies. A great deal of emphasis is placed on technical assistance, almost as a diversion from real issues.

The major economic powers have succeeded in eroding the role and functions of the U.N. mainly by keeping it on the brink of financial bankruptcy by illegally withholding the payment of their contributions. For the same reason, they have spurned all suggestions for providing to the U.N., access to automatic and predictable sources of financing, such as through a taxation on global commons. They have also forced upon all the organisations of the U.N. system for the last 20 years or so, a zero nominal growth in their budgets. This means a decline in real terms of 3 to 5 per cent per annum in their budgets.

In the context of the Iraq war, major powers such as Germany, France, Russia and China have laid great emphasis on the prevalence of the rule of international law in the conduct of inter-state relations. They would also like to see an end to the kind of unilateralism that was so blatantly on display in the attack on Iraq. They are seeking multi-polarity in the international power structure. There is no forum except the U.N. through which these objectives can be realised. It symbolises the highest level of excellence in the evolution of the international order. It constitutes the most up-to-date regime of international laws. And it goes beyond multi-polarity in that it is the only multilateral organisation which has nearly universal membership and which, at least in form if not in actual practice, is democratic, as it is based on the concept of the sovereign equality of states.

What is needed is to resurrect and update the U.N. This will call for restoring to it the Charter functions it has lost and introducing in it changes which reflect the transformations that have taken place in the world and which are in keeping with the core human values of liberty, justice, equity and respect for life.

Chastened by the experience of the Iraq war, countries like China, Russia, France and Germany should be able to make a common cause with the vast majority of the member states of the U.N., in restructuring and revitalising the world body. These countries should know that it is unrealistic to expect the U.N. to assert its role and work for multi-polarity in the security field, when it has been rendered hollow from all sides. In fact, these countries must own up, at least privately, their responsibility in driving the U.N. to its present predicament and join others in an endeavour to reverse the trend evidenced since the early 1980s and to introduce the changes essential for the U.N. to become truly democratic and an effective purveyor of modern values and norms. If the U.N. succeeds in making its decision-making truly democratic, if it is no longer held hostage to the non-payment of dues by a few major contributors, and if it subjects all states — developed and developing, poor and rich, weak and powerful — to its scrutiny, policy-making and norms-setting, it will not be possible to side-step it in the security field any longer.

It is most timely for a country such as India to put together, in consultation with the leading members of the Non-Aligned Movement, a minimum reform package to strengthen the U.N., and invite France, Germany, Russia and China to join in an endeavour to develop a consensus on it. These powers should be challenged to accept the reality that strengthening the U.N. is the only way of having an effective working multilateralism based on international law, democracy and equity.

This package can be derived from the vast array of proposals on U.N. reforms contained in the reports of various commissions, working groups and individuals, submitted in the first half of the 1990s. These included the report of the "Commission on Global Governance", "Our Global Neighbourhood", that of the Independent Working Group on the future of the U.N. and that prepared on behalf of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation by Erskine Childers and Brian Urquhardt entitled, "Renewing the United Nations System". The last mentioned report made extensive suggestions on restructuring the Secretariat and the administrative and financial management of the U.N. It also cited elaborate facts and figures to convincingly explore the myths regarding the U.N.'s "vast sprawling bureaucracy", its "large extravagant budgets" and its "inefficiency and corruption", deliberately perpetrated by the extra-conservative think-tanks in the West and exploited by their Governments for whittling down the role and functions of the world body.

The major powers showed no inclination even to give serious consideration, let alone accept, to any of the substantive recommendations of these commissions and groups. Instead, under the pretext of reforms they have been systematically imposing on the U.N. measures to downsize and weaken it.

Successive Secretary-Generals have been complicit in bringing about and providing the rationale for the so-called reforms. In fact, advanced commitment to do so has been regarded as the principal qualification for their being installed in their exalted position. It is really ironical, though not surprising, that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize came to the U.N. precisely at a time when it was reduced to a shadow of what it was intended to be under the Charter. The award was, in fact, a seal of approval on the vastly emaciated and drastically reoriented role of the U.N.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Change and the catalyst

Major issues behind a State tax

Indo-Bangladesh ties

Time to strengthen the U.N. — I

Angkor: a temple town awaits Indians