The United Nations is an international organization that dates back to 1945. It was established in the wake of World War 2, in an effort to prevent devastation and massacre of that scale ever again. All 193 Member States of the UN participate and engage in dialogue within its various organs. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the principles stated in its Founding Charter.
The work of the UN can be divided into five main branches: maintenance of peace and security, protection of human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promotion of sustainable development, and upholding international law. Perhaps the most important of all is the UN’s duty to maintain international peace and security by working towards conflict prevention, aiding countries in conflict to make peace, peacekeeping, and creating an environment that fosters peace and allows it to flourish and prosper against all odds. This duty is further delegated to the UNSC, the United Nations Security Council.
The council consists of 15 members, 5 that are permanent and 10 that are non-permanent. Each member has a single vote and all members have to comply with the decisions made by the council. The UNSC takes the central role in identifying whether a threat exists to peace and monitoring other acts of aggression. It also calls upon the parties involved in a conflict to settle it via peaceful means and also suggests and recommends methods of doing so. Sometimes, the UNSC can be compelled to imposing sanctions or authorize the use of hard power to restore peace and security to the international stage.
When Pakistan and India gained independence in 1947, they went to war over Kashmir. This was the beginning of the longstanding Kashmir dispute. Over the course of the war, India approached the UN for mediation on the matter on 1st January 1948. In 1949, the UN played a pivotal role in enforcing a ceasefire between the two countries. A ceasefire line is also known as the Line of Control. The ceasefire was commenced through mutual consent from India and Pakistan that the United Nations Security Council and the UN Commission for India and Pakistan would pass a handful of resolutions following the years after the war.
On 21st April 1948, the UNSC passed a primary resolution of the Kashmir dispute which stated that “both India and Pakistan desire that the question of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan should be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite”. Such a plebiscite has not yet materialized. All the resolutions that followed reinforced the same sentiments. The agitation in Indian Occupied Kashmir has been due to its people fighting for the right to exercise self-determination. All peaceful protests and marches for their freedom have been squashed by the Indian military forces in the area. This has resulted in many children, women, and men being killed and injured.
Over the course of the last few weeks, the world has witnessed one devastation after another in Kashmir with the aid of social media. The exposure to all the blood, gore and unrest in the form of pictures and videos alongside the horrifying reports from Indian Occupied Kashmir begs the question: Why isn’t the UN wading in the Kashmir situation?
As detailed above, the conception of the United Nations was done in the aftermath of WWII, with the maintenance of international peace and security as it’s primary responsibility and the core theme of the organization. This particular detail was reinforced and reemphasized when the General Assembly integrated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December 1948. However, over the turns of decades, a simple glance at UN history demonstrates that the UN, as it is today, has been powerless and impotent in its response to the large-scale abuse of human rights in various countries particularly in terms of genocides and ethnic cleansing.
A simple look at current events supports the claim that, apart from high profile admonishment, the UN has failed to make substantial strides in efforts to aid the Burmese military’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslims. Many Rohingya activists described the lack of response from the UN as “systemic failure” stating that: “the overall responsibility (of the organization) was of a collective character … it truly can be characterized as a systemic failure…”. The system failed because individuals didn’t fulfill their obligations. In addition to this, the slow response to the fall of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 and the Tutsi genocide in 1994 also serve as evidence of the UN’s failure as a peacekeeping organization, and that of its adherence to the core theme of its mission statement.
One of the core issues lies in the very organization of the United Nations Security Council. By virtue of being five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council, the states get veto power. This veto power enables China, Russia, France, Great Britain, or the United States to singlehandedly curb the integration of any proposed resolution. The primary duty of the UN Security Council is to identify how to deal with any violations of human rights. The possession of veto power interferes with this duty as it has lead to situations where these five nations have killed resolutions that directly conflict with their interests and the interests of their close allies.
Records from the UN Library demonstrated that Russia has utilized its veto power to put a halt to four resolutions regarding Syria, which has been a Russian ally since 2011. The proposed resolutions suggested an inquiry into human rights violations under the Assad Regime and enactment of a series of sanctions on the Syrian government that meddled with Russia based military operations in the area.
The possession of the veto power clarifies why the UN has been inactive in the Syrian Crisis. In a similar fashion, the US infamously vetoed resolution S/10784 in 1972. The resolution had called for a halt of Israel’s unprovoked military advancement in Lebanon. The veto was perpetrated due to the country’s economic and geopolitical ties with Israel. The list of the abuses of the veto power goes on and all five countries have contributed to it, leading to a situation where the UN could not deploy its resources to the detriment of many people.
The other problem with the UN lies in semantics; what exactly qualifies as genocide or ethnic cleansing? The distinction between the two is not clear-cut but it has two main legal consequences.
Firstly, the International Criminal Court (ICC) identifies only genocide as a crime. The ICC is an independent judicial organization which is separate from the UN, however, it is an obligation of the UN Security Council to relay any cases of genocide to the ICC per Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. This clause implies that the government charged with and guilty of “ethnic cleansing” by the UN Security Council does not face any trial by the ICC.
Secondly, the Responsibility to Protect (or R2P) Doctrine details the obligation of member countries to wade in with required measures in only cases of genocide and “large scale ethnic cleansing”. However, military action is costly and unpopular, so the UNSC is motivated to falsely label cases of genocide as ethnic cleansing as that clears room to justify lack of military action on part of the UN. The two main issues clearly demonstrate why no strides have been made in the case against Myanmar and its genocide in Rohingya – which the UN has labeled as ethnic cleansing, leading to next to no action being taken against the Burmese government.
When Article 370 was revoked, Pakistan wrote to the UN to complain about India’s abrogation of the special status of J&K. The letter failed to invoke any action from the body, with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) president Joanna Wronecka refusing to make any comments. After a meeting with Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, Wronecka simply remarked “No comments”.
Moreover, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister wrote to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stating that the abrogation violated the UNSC resolution of 1949. In response, Guterres invoked the 1972 Shimla Agreement in his response to Pakistan’s complaint. The agreement states that the two countries will settle all their issues through peaceful talks bilaterally. However, it was announced that the UNSC will deliberate the Kashmir issue privately on 16th August.
The intricacies within the inner working of the UN has compelled the organization to be a slave to the very countries that it is made up of. It has become tangled in a web of biases and compromises that renders it impotent to face humanitarian crises head-on with precision and speed. The complexities have made the UN unsuccessful in the prevention of cases of genocide. Due to these reasons, the UN has devolved into a reactionary body that chooses to go with ineffective solutions at the expense of its mission statement.
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