The United Nations: After 75 Years of Existence, is it Worth Anything?

The United Nations: After 75 Years of Existence, is it Worth Anything? Measured by the yardsticks of international peace, human rights and self-determination, the UN has been incredibly ineffective

BY GHULAM NABI FAI

Last September, H.E. Volkan Bozkir, president of the UN General Assembly, commemorated the organization’s 75th anniversary under the theme of proclaiming, “The future we want, the United Nations we need; reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism.”

Bozkir further added, “I intend to place an emphasis on the need to advance the UN collective agenda for humanity with particular attention to vulnerable groups, people in need and the people under oppression.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed, “And it’s very important that we now create the conditions to address the smaller but still dramatically deadly conflicts that we are facing in today’s world.”

Success is measured not only by the objectives achieved but also by whether an alternate strategy would have been an improvement. Considering the dismal situation today, it might be said that the UN is the worst international organization for achieving peace, self-determination and human rights — except for all the alternatives that have been attempted or contemplated. Success is also measured by the goals achieved. The UN Charter’s Article I identifies a cluster of primary purposes: the maintenance of international peace and security, collective efforts to prevent and remove threats to peace and to suppress acts of aggression, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations that might lead to a breach of international peace and security, the cultivation of amity among nations based on the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. Before surveying its historical record, consider a few earthbound observations. Candor and fair-mindedness relate that measured by the yardsticks of international peace, human rights and self-determination, the UN has been painfully ineffective. The most gifted men and women have toiled since time began to end conflict and warfare, but without much visible success. Look at the world as it comes before you day after day. Conflict and carnage seem ubiquitous: Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, Xinjiang, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iraq ... the list seems horrifyingly endless. The UN has no excuse for its failure to pluck universal peace from the profoundly flawed human species. Counted among the UN’s greatest failures is the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Only 10 miles from the Serbian border, the Serbs attacked it in July 1995 during the Bosnian war. And yet despite already knowing the Serb plan not only to attack but also to separate Bosnian men and boys from women and children and then kill them, U.S. and British officials did nothing to prevent the massacre, UN forces were not reinforced and there was no evacuation plan. Despite being guaranteed as a “safe zone” by the UN, the official policy was to allow the Serbs to take the town they had besieged, as it was indefensible. More than 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered in a matter of days. In 1994, a far worse genocide occurred in Rwanda when Hutus slaughtered about a million Tutsis. Despite its foreknowledge, the UN allowed this genocide to

occur. The Telegraph (U.K., “What have been the suc- Another dangerous situation was — and remains — Kashmir. A princely state cesses and failures of UN peacekeeping missions?” under the British Raj, Muslim-majority Kashmir was sold to a Hindu brigand for Sept. 28, 2015) said, “A 1999 inquiry found that the a pittance. It achieved statehood on August 15, 1947, when British paramountcy UN ignored evidence that the genocide was planned lapsed. Amidst much intrigue, India dispatched its military to prop up the crumand refused to act once it had started. More than 2,500 bling autocratic regime and concurrently raced to the UN Security Council, UN peacekeepers were withdrawn after the murder of with Pakistan in close pursuit, to secure multiple resolutions prescribing an ten Belgian soldiers. In one case, the peacekeeping forces UN-conducted self-determination plebiscite for Kashmir. The Security Council deserted a school where Tutsis were taking shelter — agreed to the formula, but India soon apostatized from its commitment when it hundreds of people inside were immediately massacred.” realized that Kashmiris would never vote for accession to its sovereign orbit in Cyprus, founded in 1960 as a partnership state a free and fair referendum. between the Turkish and the Greek Cypriots, features For more than 73 years, India’s international lawlessness has escaped UN sancan equally bleak UN past. By constitutional design, tions or even moral reproach. India’s human rights record is gruesome but hidden its legislature and executive offices were proportion- behind an iron curtain that keeps out the likes of CNN and BBC. Its military’s ally divided between the two ethnic communities. In commonplace military atrocities, among them extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, November 1963, a genocidal attack on Turkish Cypriots plunder, abduction and arbitrary detentions without trial, are at least on a par by Greek Cypriots destroyed this arrangement. with Slobodan Milosevic’s savagery towards Kosovar Albanians, which provoked a NATO — but not a UN — military intervention.

AT PRESENT THIS LONG-TERM FESTERING The Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human

DISPUTE HAS MADE THE TERRITORY THE Rights report circulated by the UN secretary general on Aug. 22, 2019, describes the people’s pain and

SITE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST ARMY agony: “One such people who have been recognized CONCENTRATION AND ITS MOST DANGEROUS by the UN for their ‘rights and dignity’ and ‘security and self-determination’ are the people of the State

NUCLEAR HOTSPOT. THE UN MILITARY of Jammu and Kashmir. [The] UN has defined these

OBSERVERS GROUP STATIONED ALONG THE people as ‘People of legend, song and story, associated

LINE OF CONTROL SINCE JAN. 24, 1949, IS AN with snow-capped mountains, beautiful valleys and life giving waters.’ Today we associate them with living IRRELEVANCY — SPECTATORS WHO NEITHER in a highly militarized zone and locked down inside

DETER INFRACTIONS NOR PROTECT THE their homes. We associate them with a habitat where children are recruited to carry out espionage for the KASHMIRIS’ HUMAN RIGHTS. Indian Security Forces (a war crime).” Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and the vast human rights abuses remain ongoing. India’s

U.S. Undersecretary of State George Ball denounced unilateral 2019 abrogation of Kashmir-specific Article 370 and 35A of its conGreek Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios (d. stitution is just another episode in this long drama. In 2020, India enforced the 1977) for turning the island into his “private abattoir.” Domicile Law to change Kashmir’s demography, which may also push its culture, UN peacekeeping forces have remained along the language and identity to the brink of extinction. so-called Green Line since 1964. In July 1974, after At present this long-term festering dispute has made the territory the site of a Greek coup overthrew Makarios, the UN troops the world’s largest army concentration and its most dangerous nuclear hotspot. simply retreated into hiding when Greece and Greek The UN Military Observers Group stationed along the Line of Control since Cypriots began a second genocide of Turkish Cypriots. Jan. 24, 1949, is an irrelevancy — spectators who neither deter infractions nor Turkish troops, in an intervention proclaimed legal protect the Kashmiris’ human rights. under international law by the Athens Court of It is extremely unlikely that India and Pakistan will embark upon any meanAppeal, foiled the genocide. ingful peace process on their own. Even if they do, the Kashmiris’ rights and May 1948, on the heels of a UN partition plan, interests might be at risk of being bypassed. The case for an earnest mediatory gave rise to the Arab-Israeli conflict over the sov- initiative by the UN is thus indubitable, even though in Guterres’ words, “it’s very ereignty of Palestine. The UN remained militarily difficult to mediate them (international conflicts) and to solve them.” passive, but did arrange a fragile truce or armistice Clearly, this conflict needs a strong and determined will and the genius of an and deployed peacekeeping troops in the Sinai in the imagination that knows how to negotiate and bring people together. There can peace plan that ended the Suez conflict. However, be no better person than the secretary general himself, because the negotiator Secretary General U Thant (of Myanmar) withdrew (and his team) will have to remain completely neutral. them with alacrity in 1967. Then came the Six Day Thus the person who resolves this long standing tension between two nuclear War, which resulted in UN resolutions 242 and later powers deserves a special place in history. Resolving this dispute will bring unpar338. The mainstream approach to resolving this issue alleled honor to the one who helps achieve it — an honor that could be borne is the “two-state solution.” At present, the U.S. is the by the secretary general, who will favor neither country but rather advance the only international arbiter of peace in the Middle East, causes of freedom, democracy and human rights in South Asia. ih although Palestinians have lost faith in its neutrality. Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is secretary general, World Kashmir Awareness Forum (http://kashmirawareness.org/), The UN plays only an ornamental or ceremonial role. Washington, D.C.