4

Let’s summon the courage for UN reform | United Nations

[ad_1]

Omar Barghouti is quite right to highlight the dysfunctional nature of the UN (The UN has failed us in Gaza. We must decolonize it and radically reform it, November 25). Indeed, as currently constituted, it cannot be otherwise, given the obvious conceptual contradiction at its very core: the democratic character of the general assembly is fatally flawed by the veto system in the Security Council. Because the veto (Latin for “to forbid”) is the classic tool of tyrants, and at the UN it allows any of its five permanent members – successors to the victorious Allies of World War II – to unilaterally suppress any democratic decision that contradicts what consider their own interests.

And for the most part, these interests remain the interests of a world that is the product of another age – the age of empire. This was the price of the creation of the United Nations – an American delegate to the San Francisco conference in 1945. dramatically tore up a copy of the draft charter to emphasize that without agreement on the veto there would be no UN. But we no longer live in that world – or at least not in a world where such interests are still seen as the natural spoils of victory.

Accountability is the name of the game and the west cannot in good conscience continue to push for democracy when it denies it at the core of the global system. Like it or not, a functioning UN is both a logical and necessary forum for conflict resolution when nuclear weapons mean that such matters can no longer be resolved by force: such as the horrors witnessed in Ukraine and Gaza strongly demonstrate that the UN must be able to do what it is designed to do – maintain international peace and security. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of its foundation. We must muster the courage to reform it.
Simon Prentice
London

Have an opinion on anything you read in the Guardian today? please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

[ad_2]

نوشته های مشابه

دکمه بازگشت به بالا