Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Those who seek ''the death of the United Nations''

Orlando Marville | 26.10.2003 22:07 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Social Struggles | World

While the United Nations is seen by many as merely a talk shop that gets little done, the truth lies elsewhere. For example, UNESCO has done a great deal for education and the work of UNICEF has been phenomenal.

MARVELLING: The United Nations
Orlando Marville, Barbados Nation Online, October 26, 2003

The war in Iraq brought once more into focus, one of the fundamental problems of the United Nations. Ultimately, any nation or group of nations powerful enough can ignore the will of the majority of nations.

While multilateralism, the process of acting together as a group has been the focus of the United Nations, and while President Bush and even more so Prime Minister Blair recognised the importance of multilateral moral support, they put the proposal to attack Iraq to the Security Council.

It was only when France et al used their veto power to indicate that it was not accepted to one and all that Messrs Bush and Blair invaded Iraq.

This attack on multilateralism was hailed by the Libertarian neo-conservative Richard Pearl in the strongest terms. He declared, "Thank God for the death of the United Nations. Saddam will go quickly. In a passing moment, . . . will go with him the fantasy of the United Nations." Soon thereafter, Pearl died and remained silent. Recent events might otherwise have led him to conclude, if we may paraphrase Mark Twain, the announcement of the demise of the United Nations was somewhat exaggerated.

The proof was simple. The same president Bush who had unilaterally declared war on Iraq was now coming back to the said United Nations for assistance in rebuilding that country. When at first rebuffed by the secretary general no less, he was prepared to reform his proposals to gain unanimous approval in the Security Council.

The neo-conservatives were generally silent except to indicate that it was a victory for the United States President in getting even the former objectors back on board. That is commonly referred to as spin.

This about-face may not be enough to satisfy the critics of the United Nations who insist that it is merely a talking shop. Yet, somehow, this talking shop has created a lot of jaw, jaw and not a great deal of war, war.

No one can, however, deny the need for a serious reform of the United Nations system. It was an unwise compromise to give the victors of the Second World War the power of veto in the United Nations. The failure of the League of Nations should have been a lesson. Unlearnt as that lesson was, we are now left with a United Nations that has a small segment of its membership -- to wit, the Security Council- that is more powerful than all the nations of the world.

A vote against the construction of a wall by Israel on Palestinian territory can be scuttled by a United States veto, which argues that the criticism/sanction is not valid unless there is some mention of terrorism.

Serious reform is needed either to remove the power of veto from the Security Council or to make the Security Council decisions such as can be overridden by a 67 per cent vote in the General Assembly.

Naturally, those who now possess the veto are unlikely to allow themselves to be deprived of a power reserved for the victors of a past war.

All of this, however, does not begin to scratch at what the United Nations has done through its agencies like United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Educational Scientific & Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), International Labour Organisation (ILO), Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation (WHO) -- of which PAHO is an outcrop -- International Telecommunications Union (ITU), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), United Nations Development Fund For Women (UNIFEM) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to name a few.

UNESCO has done a great deal for education, especially in the least developed countries, and has left us the first non-Eurocentric history of the world.

UNDP has funded many a small project in developing countries. The success of micro loans in Bangladesh and in the countries of the African Sahel point the way -- alas little heeded for other developing countries -- on how to attack poverty at its roots.

The ILO, as a meeting place for trade unionist and employers as well as Governments has done a great deal for the advancement of the working man not only in poor developing countries, but surprisingly in some of the more developed. It has attacked abuses like child labour.

Diseases like malaria which kill millions each year, but only a handful of developed country citizens, and sickle cell anaemia, en essentially African and African Diaspora (not only the Americas, but also India and the Mediterranean) would have gone unnoticed except for the work of the WHO. Regrettably, it is not only in areas of technology, but even in areas of relatively available medicines that we get left behind. Their work too in the area of HIV/AIDS has been considerable.

The work too of UNICEF has been phenomenal. One only has to look at the attention paid not only to children's health in today's world, but even the debate on children's rights to recognise how far we have come from children working exceedingly long hours in British mills less than 200 years ago.

It is true that we still have -- in spite of some efforts by the government to stop it -- child labour in a number of countries including India. But even that this fact is registered as an abuse of the young human kind is significant in that it highlights evils that would have been taken for granted before the days of the United Nations.

While the United Nations is seen by many as merely a talk shop that gets little done, the truth lies elsewhere. I was once dropped off at the United Nations by a taxi driver who pointed to the General Assembly building and remarked: "That is the biggest country club in the world."

The sarcasm is not untypical of United States citizens either complaining that the United Nations did not support them in some area -- however unjustified their action or that it does nothing.

Orlando Marville is a retired diplomat and specialist on African affairs.

Orlando Marville
- e-mail: nationnews@sunbeach.net
- Homepage: http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=43655&Section=LO

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. Perspective please — Flaming Sword
  2. who are the thugs? — laura
  3. Clue phone ringing, Laura, its for you! — Flaming Sword

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech