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The UN's selective intervention

By Stephen Cheleda - posted Monday, 18 February 2008


As previously mentioned, Article 2(7) has been frequently cited as the reason for not allowing the UN to intervene in a nation’s “domestic” affairs. However, the last part of the paragraph states that “… this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII”.

If a certain civil war is in danger of destabilising a whole region by spreading the development of intolerance among its neighbours, than the Security Council could regard that as a threat to peace, and take appropriate measures.

Another difficulty regarding Article 2(7) is to define what is a genuine “domestic affair” and what is a failed state, where the role played by central government is absent or in name only, where international criminality can flourish, and where minorities are not protected.

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The General Assembly and the Security Council could also place far more emphasis on Article 1(3), which states one of the important purposes of the UN being “… promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms …” They can insist on far more determination than they hitherto have shown, that this Article is adhered to.

Another aspect of the Charter, which has been totally ignored by the Security Council is Article 47(3), which states that “The Military Staff Committee shall be responsible under the Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council”.

Until this Article was rescinded recently, the UN had only nominally led all the UN enforcement actions. In every case the forces involved have been under the ultimate command of their own governments. This has also meant that the UN was, essentially, limited to use the type of intervention that these forces were trained for. The UN had no chance to develop its own strategy and its own ethos as was originally intended under Article 47. Instead, it was hampered and tainted by the inadequacies of the available, conventional and often heavy-handed military doctrine.

It is important to bear in mind that the United Nations is not a world government, but “… a gathering of sovereign states, and what it can do depends on the common ground between them”.

In An Agenda for Peace, the Secretary General of the UN at the time, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, highlighted a reason for the organisation’s shortcomings:

The adversarial decades of the cold war made the original promise of the … Organisation impossible to fulfil.

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He went on to say that the statements adopted at the conclusion of the first meeting held by the Security Council at the level of Heads of State and Government in January 1992, “… represented an unprecedented recommitment, at the highest political level, to the Purposes an Principles of the Charter.” Sadly, this recommitment has been sidelined by events.

Without necessarily devising new structures, or planning to give new powers to the UN, the way to tackle the seemingly endemic conflicts around the world already exists. A great deal can be done by the International Court of Justice, working at the behest of the member states of the General Assembly, and activating those aspects of it which encourage genuine political, economic and cultural co-operation not only between governments, but also between the peoples of the world.

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About the Author

Stephen Cheleda was born in Budapest in 1938 and has lived in the UK since December 1956. After working in industry, he became a teacher of Mathematics in 1971. Stephen did an MA in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He retired in 2003.

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