If not the UN, what? (no need convincing any of you!!)

If not the UN, what?

Critics of the organisation should explain their alternative to it, for it remains the only mechanism we have to uphold peace and human rights in the world today.

Conor Foley

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August 9, 2006 03:08 PM | Printable version

Shortly after the Kosovo war in 1999, Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, famously posed a question about the relationship between state sovereignty and international human rights. "For those who think the former inviolable", he asked, "how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica - to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?"

In the last few pieces that I have written on humanitarian interventions a variety of commentators have posed the same question to me. I think that interventions that seek to sideline the UN are likely to be counter-productive. But what if the security council refuses to intervene in a case of clear genocide? "Are we supposed to watch the Hutus sharpening their machetes while we wait for a UN resolution?" asked one respondent.

The simplest answer is that the failures in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina cannot actually be blamed on the UN charter, as the security council did agree to Chapter VII interventions in both countries. That the interventions were late, feeble and ineffective is beyond doubt, but this does not automatically mean that a more robust mandate would have made them successful. These interventions followed the disaster of Somalia, which was the first time that the UN had used its Chapter VII powers in respect to a purely internal crisis. "Operation shoot-to-feed", as it became known, undoubtedly contributed to the reluctance of western nations to put their troops at risk in future humanitarian missions.

The UN is obviously not beyond criticism, but it is reasonable to ask what alternatives would be better? Did NATO do a better job protecting minorities in Kosovo? Was the ECOWAS mission to Liberia more successful?

To a large extent the weaknesses of the UN system simply reflect the inequalities and injustices of the world that we live in. The UN has "failed" to intervene in Cechnya and Tibet because Russia and China are world powers as well as permanent members of the security council. It has "failed" to bring an end to the conflict in Lebanon because the British and US governments tacitly support Israel's intervention.

The UN mission to Lebanon has recently come under attack from both sides. A commentator here described its unarmed observers as "next to useless" and stopped just short of justifying the Israeli attack on their post. One of my relatives, Captain James Kelly, was a UN blue beret in a previous mission to northern Israel and the Golan Heights back in the 1960s and has written about what it is like to be pinned down by hostile fire. He subsequently became a defendant in the 1970 arms trial when ministers in the Irish Government were accused of sending guns to republicans in Northern Ireland. I have posed the question before about whether this is a better way to "protect the victims" when the state proves unable to fulfil this responsibility?

It should also be recognised that the UN has got a lot better at peacekeeping over the last decade, as the falling number of conflicts and refugees shows. Last year, language embodying the concept of the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) was endorsed by the world's heads of state at the UN's 60th anniversary summit. In April of this year, the security council accepted its responsibility "to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the security council, in accordance with the Charter, including chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis" to protect people against war crimes, ethnic cleansing and other violations.

The words "through the security council" make it clear that R2P does not legitimate actions taken outside this framework. For those who see conflicts in black and white terms this is probably a pity. Some may view the renewed outbreak of conflict in Darfur as another indictment of the UN's failure to prevent "genocide", although most informed observers seem to take a more nuanced position about the conflict. This does not mean that we do not care about the victims, just that we do not want to make things any worse for them.

For those of us who believe in collective security, however, the UN remains the only mechanism that we have to uphold peace and human rights in the world today. To those who disagree with this statement, what is your alternative?

 

 

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from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2006/08/if_not_the_un_what.html