The Charter of the United Nations is the founding document of the United
Nations. It was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of
the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into
force on 24 October 1945.
The Preamble of
United Nations Charter states:
“WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in
our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the
equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish
conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from
treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to
promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace
with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain
international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles
and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the
common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the
economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO
ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS.
Accordingly, our respective Governments,
through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have
exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to
the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an
international organization to be known as the United Nations.”
The UN Charter codifies the major
principles of international relations, from sovereign equality of States to the
prohibition of the use of force in international relations. However, it is a
flawed charter, which divides the member states into two major castes: the
Brahmins with the veto-wielding power in the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the
Sudras who lack the veto power, and are, thus, left at the mercy of the
Brahmins. While every member state is a part of the General Assembly, the
actual power rests with the 15-member Security Council of which only five (namely,
the USA, the UK, France, Russia and China) are permanent members with the power
to use their veto on decision making on peace and security matters. These
powers are enshrined in the two clauses.
The Article 24.1 states that “In
order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its Members
confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of
international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties
under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.”
The
Article 27.3 states that “Decisions of the Security Council on all other
matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the
concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under
Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall
abstain from voting.”
A negative vote from any of the permanent members will block
the adoption of a draft resolution. However, a permanent member that abstains
or is absent from the vote will not block a resolution from being passed.
Last Friday, we saw a good demonstration of this power when Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have
demanded that Moscow immediately stop its attack on Ukraine and withdraw all
troops. Russia’s move did not surprise anyone since she is a permanent member
of the UNSC.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield deplored the Russian
veto stating, “You can veto this resolution, but you cannot veto
our voices; You cannot veto the truth; You cannot veto our principles; You
cannot veto the Ukrainian people; cannot veto the UN Charter…and
you will not veto accountability.”
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya chided the
USA for its own double-standards and said with its history of aggressions against other
countries, the United States was “in no position to moralize.” He
accused the draft’s sponsors of “spinning tales” about the true situation in
Ukraine, including Western allies’ attempts to cover up the fact that they
had been flooding the Donbas with weapons. “You have made Ukraine a pawn in
your own game… this resolution is nothing other than yet another brutal,
inhumane move on this Ukrainian chessboard,” he said.
Antonio Gutteres, the top UN official, remains hopeful. His Organization is credited with helping negotiate more than 172 peaceful settlements and helping
more than 30 million refugees, providing safe drinking water to more than a
billion people and food to millions of people across 80 nations, assisting
countries with their elections, providing vaccinations for children, helping
millions of women with maternal health and protecting human rights through some
80 treatise and declarations.
He
stressed that although the UN Charter has
been challenged in the past, it has “stood firm on the side of peace, security,
development, justice, international law and human rights”. “Time
after time, when the international community has rallied together in
solidarity, those values have prevailed. They will prevail, independently of
what happened today,” the UN chief said.
“We
must do everything in our power so that they prevail in Ukraine but they
prevail for all humanity,” concluded the Secretary-General.
The Security Council voted on Sunday (Feb. 27, 2022) to call
for a rare emergency special session of the 193-member UN General Assembly (UNGA)
on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which will be held on
Monday. Since the text acted on Sunday was procedural, none of the five
permanent Council members could use
their vetoes. The measure needed just nine votes in favor to pass. The
measure convening the UNGA session was adopted by a vote of 11 in favor, with
Russia voting against, and China, India and the United Arab Emirates
abstaining.
It is important to note that only ten such emergency
special sessions of the General
Assembly have been convened since 1950, following the adoption of
resolution 377A(V), widely known as ‘Uniting for Peace.’
The outcome of this emergency special session of the UNGA will
not have any biting power though to change the course of the current crisis
unless the parties in question volunteer to change.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear weapons
on high alert, and his armed forces reached the second-largest Ukrainian city
of Kharkiv on Sunday, more support poured in for Ukraine in its ongoing effort
to fend off Russian forces.
The European Union (EU) announced unprecedented new actions against
Russia. It agreed to close its airspace to Russian airlines, spend $ 500 hundreds millions on buying weapons for Ukraine and ban some pro-Kremlin media outlets in its latest response to
Russia’s invasion. USA and its allies have also decided to block
"selected" Russian banks from the SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payments system, which is supposed to
inflict a crippling economic blow by preventing Russia from moving
money easily. Perhaps even
more damaging to Russia than shutting it out of Swift is a move to isolate
Russia's central bank. Preventing it from using its $630 billion international
dollar reserves to support the Rouble could see its value collapse with dire
consequences for the Russian economy. The Associated Press
reported that US has approved the delivery of anti-aircraft Stinger missiles to
Ukraine, which may prove to be a game changer in the conflict.
The Ukraine crisis, like the post-9/11 Bush-Blair’s ‘illegal’ wars in
the Muslim world, has once again shown how ineffective the UN can be when the
culprit is a veto-wielding member of the UNSC. In the past, we have also seen
how pariah states with horrendous records of crimes against humanity, e.g., Israel
and Myanmar that are not permanent members, can be shielded by their criminal
patrons or sponsors wielding veto powers.
It was Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN
secretary general, who said that the United Nations “was created
not to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell”. Sadly, rather than saving humanity from hell, the UNSC has often acted as the
conduit to protect the devil.
A number of ongoing crises are indicative of
U.N. inaction and paralysis, including Russia’s takeover of part of Ukraine;
China occupying disputed territories in South China Sea; the Iraq War; the
Israel-Palestine conflict; civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya and the Democratic
Republic of Congo; and the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar, Ughyurs in China
and Kashmiris (and Muslim minorities) in India.
As noted by Saeed Khan elsewhere, still, the
U.N. and multilateralism are popular throughout the world. A UN survey
conducted over more than a million people and dialogues through global
consultation, “UN75: The Future We Want, the UN We Need” found that over 87% of
the people considered global collaborations vital to facing global challenges
and 74% deemed the U.N. essential in tackling those challenges.
Since the UN's founding in 1945, the
mission and work of the Organization have been guided by the purposes and
principles contained in its founding Charter, which has been amended three times in 1963,
1965, and 1973.
The latest crisis in Ukraine makes it abundantly clear
that the UN Charter needs amendment so that no veto-wielding
Brahmin member can create an impasse by invading a non-veto-wielding Sudra
member state. This would require democratizing the UN by either taking away the
veto-wielding status within the UNSC, or giving the sole decision on conflict
resolution to the UNGA where the majority decision prevails.
The sooner the world-body adopts these
changes, the better prepared would our world be to defeat the scourge of war, which in our lifetime has brought so much untold sorrow
and misery to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in
the dignity and worth of the human person.
