UN reform calls for strong resolution

In March 2003, the rest of the UN member states watched helplessly as the US and its allies barraged Iraq and, over the next four years, reduced the most advanced state in the Middle East to rubble.

On the other hand, three of the five permanent Security Council members, the US, the UK and France, are today - and have been since the creation of the UN - among the world's top four weapons-exporters, with China coming in at seventh place. Germany, a strong contender for a permanent seat, is the world’s fourth largest weapons supplier.

In December 2004, the UN issued a Report (pdf 341KB) of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, “A more secure world: our shared responsibility”, prepared in response to perceptions that the UN was no longer effective in meeting its mandate.

The document states that initiatives must be multilateral in nature, and that unilateralist actions can lead to chaos and anarchy, as in Iraq.

The dilemma is that unilateral actions by superpowers encourage other states to follow and do whatever they feel suits them. Pakistan and India secretly developed nuclear weapons and became nuclear powers, and despite great international pressure, never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea and Iran are following in their footsteps.

In the current Israel-Lebanon conflict, the majority of UN member states are against Israel’s disproportionate use of force and aerial bombardment against Hezbollah militias.

All of Lebanon has been ruined in the past couple of weeks; thousands of innocent people have died; and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. The Israeli air force bombarded a UN peacekeeping center, killing four UN observers, and when other UN members put-up a resolution condemning Israel, the US vetoed the move.

Since 1972, the US has exercised its veto more than 30 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions. Many of these resolutions related to Israeli forces killing and attacking civilian targets in Palestine.

The international community wants to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, but by blocking every move against Israel in the Security Council, the US demonstrates that it wants to resolve the matter only on its terms, not the majority’s.

Another reason for the UN’s and Security Council’s ineffectiveness and incapacity to prevent illegal behaviour by states is that in the past 60 years the world has changed greatly.

Sixty years ago, as the only powers holding nuclear warheads and powerful air and ground forces, China, Russia (USSR), the UK, France and the US qualified to be the permanent Security Council members, and hold the veto.

Now more states feel they too satisfy the criteria. India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel have already demonstrated that they are nuclear powers; Iran has also announced it has adequate military might and nuclear capabilities.