Time for the UN to rediscover its purpose and power

Ray Hanania

The original purpose of the UN when it was founded in 1945 was to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation in solving global problems, and promote and encourage respect for human rights.

These lofty goals were embraced as the most important move toward world peace and security following the end of the Second World War, which took the lives of nearly 80 million people and devastated Europe and Asia.

The UN was to serve as a focal point for all the world’s nations to come together and harmonize for peace, preventing future conflicts through collaboration and unified action.

Today, 80 years later, it is clear that, despite some regional industrial achievements, the UN is a failure that can be easily manipulated not by worldwide nation state consensus, but by the impunity of a handful of superpowers.

One of the biggest obstacles to the UN achieving its goals of worldwide peace and collaboration is the US, which — like the four other key founders, China, France, Russia and the UK — uses the international organization to manage its own selfish political agendas.

But the original and pure mission of the UN can be salvaged by moving the $68 billion organization from its New York location to somewhere more neutral, like Norway, Sweden or even the Gulf, which in recent years has become a focal point of shifting world power.

Last week, in another display of disdain and impunity for the UN’s lofty goals, the US secretary of state declared that Palestinian leaders and officials would not be permitted to attend the General Assembly’s 80th session, a violation of the UN Headquarters Agreement it signed in 1947.

The US is politically supporting, defending and funding Israel’s genocidal carnage in the Gaza Strip, where about 65,000 people, including tens of thousands of women and children, have been murdered. Using weaponry provided by America, Israel has intentionally destroyed nearly 90 percent of the civilian infrastructure — homes, businesses, schools, mosques, churches and hospitals.

The devastation caused by the Israeli government in Gaza, with the complicity of US politicians — Republicans and Democrats alike — is precisely why the UN was founded in San Francisco 80 years ago. Fifty nation states signed up at the time, but the organization’s membership has now grown to 193.

Instead of bringing the human carnage in Gaza to an end, the US finds itself helpless to do anything except provide a platform in a side auditorium at the UNGA as the five founders define policy in the Security Council.

Some might say that the system was intentionally designed so that the five founding world powers could control the rest of the world, because that is exactly what they are doing.

Many times, the US has declared its intent to leave various organs of the UN or to suspend its funding. As one of the richest countries in the world, it can certainly afford to be the UN’s largest funder. But money does not buy morality — or the peace that the UN originally set out to achieve.

In 1988, the US, under Republican President Ronald Reagan, prevented Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the country to address the UN in New York. At the time of Arafat’s ban, Israel’s government was engaged in widespread land theft, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the killing of Palestinians and the relocation and expulsion of non-Jews, applying a dual system of civil rules for Jews and non-Jews. However, rather than kowtow to the heavy-handed dictates of the US, the UN found its chutzpah and moved the UNGA session to Geneva.

If the UN had powerful moral leadership today, it would not only convene the UNGA’s 80th session in Geneva but also begin the process of abandoning the towering building in New York and relocating to a country that respects the agreements it signs.

A coalition of American activists called Lifeline for Palestine this week reminded the world that, while the permanent members of the UNSC can prevent peace by using a veto, the UNGA’s 193 members have the power, under a Cold War-era provision called “Uniting for Peace,” to circumvent the council’s stagnation and protect Gaza’s beleaguered and famine-stricken civilian population.

But that requires strength, determination to abide by the international rule of law and dedication to the principles that serve as the UN’s moral foundation. Does all this even exist at the UN today? Or has the organization founded to fight for peace and global security merely become a bureaucratic functionary of the powerful?

Courtesy: arabnews