Has United Nations Failed The Global Mandate?

December 11, 2021

BIRTH OF UNITED NATIONS

United Nations was found from the ashes of league of nations and world war two,with the then US president Franklin d Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill acting as the flag bearers of this initiative.It is on the 24 of October 1945th at United Nations officially Came into existence,with representatives from 50 countries meeting in San Francisco.The Organization was formed to up hold the following objectives:

1.To Maintain International Peace And Stability
2.To Promote Human Rights Around The World
3.To develop relations between nations on the basis of equality
4.To foster world wide cooperation and friendship in solving humanitarian,social,economic
and cultural problems
5.To prevent any wars and protect the succeeding generations from the wreckage’s of wars.

The United Nations has a set of organizations that act as tools in promoting these objectives,
these are:

1. The General Assembly
2.The Security Council
3. The Economic And Social Council
4. The Trusteeship Council
5. The International Court Of Justice
6. The Secretariat

United Nations also gives policy guidance through peace building and tend to serve the general in correlating the UN agencies in their efforts. United Nations also greatly being called upon global fight against terrorism. United nation work in prior in promoting international peace and security by abolishing of nuclear weapons. As we look into this, the main aim was to keep it all in balance without any conflicts between nations. But when the question raise “Has the UN failed the global mandate” one has to carefully analyse what the founding goals of UN has been and if it has achieved to do that. In this paper I will try to analyse the same using a case study of the “ Rohingya crisis”. Currently one million people are forcefully displaced across the border. It is also making the crisis complex for the both refugees and most communities and there’s no end to find in the sight presently.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Janne Haaland Matlary in her article explores the status of a UN mandate for military intervention, especially in the aftermath of the non-mandated interventions in Kosovo and Iraq. It examines the realist and positivist approaches to this issue, and proposes a third approach, called the ‘human rights model’ in which public legitimacy plays a key role. It shows that not only political assessments but also legal ones differ on this question according the premises they are based on. The article further analyses how normative and military power interacts in today’s global public debate, and concludes that legitimacy for an intervention is established on a case-by-case basis. [The legitimacy of military intervention: How important is a UN mandate?]

E Newman in the paper’ The UN Secretary general from the cold war to new era:A global peace and security mandate?’ explains how important the perception of all parties involved is towards peace keeping.It is only then that the Secretary General can bring impartiality fully to the interventions. It is only when all parties want it that the UN can make effective interventions. The author opines that peace keeping is the most viable option in peace keeping.The UN intended to bring the major military powers together with the main task of maintaining international peace and security (Weiss 2018: 174, Hanhimaki 2015: 18).UNSC resolutions have been central for tackling conflict situations and have also demonstrated that extensive joint action can be taken to respond to crisis, such as in the case of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 where it condemned its action and authorized states to “use all necessary means” to stop the occupation (Mingst and Karns 2011: 105). UN oversight was weak and the autonomy of US action as well as the lack of inclusion of supportive states outside of the Council in the decision-making process is one example that points to the undemocratic structure of the Council as well as the continued importance of powerful states during interventions, rather than the UN itself (Ebegbulem 2011: 25).

Security Council vetoes have not always managed to stop nations from proceeding with their endeavors, which was the case with the US’ invasion of Iraq, 2003 (Morris & Wheeler 2007: 221). This shows that the individual interests of some states make them deviate from institutional constraints, pointing to flaws in the theory of liberal institutionalism that laid the basis for the UN. Such examples spark doubt about the credibility of the UN and UNSC and disrupt the balance that the composition of UNSC is to uphold, which is one important obstacle to its success in maintaining peace and security. -How Successful Has the UN Been in Maintaining International Peace and Security?-

Anette Sonnback

Defects in the actual management of peacekeeping forces are commonly said to be the result of ‘UN bureaucracy’, but that broad-brush accusation often misses the mark. The so-called bureaucracy is actually quite small, and among its numerous problems are the need to follow procedural arrangements established by the General Assembly; and to abide by rules and regulations which result from attempts to ensure financial efficiency. The requirements for competitive bidding for materials needed by forces in the field, imposing as they do terrible delays, are a notorious case in point. One central problem so far as management is concerned is the lack of a serious acceptance of responsibility by any one individual or country for the efficient running of an operation. When things go wrong, the UN system provides far too many possibilities of buck-passing, not only within the organization, but more importantly between member states on the one hand and the organization on the other.He goes on to explaining other problems like training funding language etc.[The Crisis in Peacekeeping- Adam Roberts]

Critics include advocates of R2P, who say the veto gives undue deference to the political interests of the P5, leading to inaction in the face of mass atrocities. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN human rights chief from 2014 to 2018, repeatedly criticized the outsize power of the veto-wielding member states, warning that without institutional change, the United Nations could collapse.Peacekeeping mandates continue to be scrutinized for their scope, cost, and cases in which peacekeepers themselves have committed abuses.

Gert Rosenthal Guatemala’s former foreign minister,conducted an independent study on the functioning of the UN and said that the UN system “has been relatively impotent to effectively work with the authorities of Myanmar to reverse the negative trends in the area of human rights and consolidate the positive trends in other areas.”He also criticized lack of leadership from Aung San Suu Kyi in the matter.

UN has been focusing its efforts towards development issues and quite diplomacy regarding the Rohingya crisis.It has been largely silent on the perpetrators of violence and focusing on tending to the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. In this paper I will use Rohingya crisis in Myanmar as a case study to look at UN’s failure in keeping up with its mandate on peace.

CASE STUDY: ROHINGYA CRISIS

“Rohingya” are an ethnic Muslim minority who are been practicing a Sufi-inflected variation of Sunni Islam. Their origin is been tracked in the region from 15th century back. But Rohingya have considered to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though most of them are rooted in Myanmar back centuries. So the main issue that is been faced and still facing from Rohingya are they are forcefully displaced and also pushed under a institutionalized discrimination, such as exclusionary citizenship laws. And yes Rohingya is a “human right,” crisis.

The Myanmar government launched a military campaign in 2017 where seven hundred thousand Rohingya forced to run away. And the right groups suspect that the government has committed genocide against the Rohingya which is partially true because the government support was very less towards the crisis. Through the Rohingya’s lack of freedom they also loosed their representation, rights and freedoms. They are forced to live in camps, and not been provided the basic human services as such education and health care. They are been banned from choosing their career as government jobs and etc. Also from basic right from voting.

Rohingya’s are also pressurized in their choice of personal life as in limited in the number of children they can have. A step from UN is that it does served about 25,000 Rohingya who live in official UN camps, but majority are left back. They are been constantly trapped with no freedom to move. The violence from 2012 over 87,000 Rohingya have moved from place by using rickety boats which is dangerous on a sea passage. Where in over 800,000 still remain in a hard conditions in Myanmar, while 300,000 live in Bangladesh with no better conditions, it is also found that others have been escaped from current crisis to different countries, and still facing a challenge to live a normal life.By analyzing the crisis, UN must have taken the measure in resolving the issue and engaging in finding solutions to crisis that’s been prolonging. In fact on the whole crisis, the strong decision in making peace between two communities were are not taken in action by United Nations. We could find it was all rare service to people, their responsibility in bringing solution and peace is ultimately not seen in the Rohingya Crisis. It is also found that the UN humanitarian community and international rights organization have been handling the crisis in a very diplomatic way in Myanmar rather bringing harmony. We find United Nations divisions are complicating its efforts to improve the lives of vulnerable people in Myanmar including the Rohingya. The fact-finding mission with unrestricted access was unsuccessful by United Nations. Due to this failure in access the prevention efforts are not being taken strongly. To add on UN also failed to give an understanding in terms of situation that took place in Myanmar. But then UN made an effort in improving the approach in international community in preventing the genocides in failure to investigate more on the crimes against humanity.

CONCLUSION

UN is a powerful organization and has balanced the world out of chaos at various instances but it is in dire need for reforms to work successfully for collective piece. It has to ensure that it holds it ends of bargain as stated in the charter. The Security Council and veto power has been criticized for so long that they need to be changed in order to uphold its principles and face the undermined challenges that the forthcoming years will present.

If one wants to ponder over the question that Is the UN still effective and relevant the answers are complicated. The UN has been powerful enough to prevent a war of a huge international scale like the world war one and two for a very long time and acted as an international stage where countries can raise their voice. However over time it has become an old toothless tiger. It needs major revamping for providing all countries equal voice as clearly countries like USA, China and Russia and their politics does influence how the United Nations is currently functioning.

To conclude with UN have made an effort to solve crisis but which was not strong. In my opinion the United Nations should change the way of approaching the enforcement of genocide concentrations in treating failure. UN should also take an measure in complying the fact-finding mission which can be more professional and authorized in investigating the potential violations. This could bring a lot of changes in getting an actual knowledge of crisis that is being taking place around the nation, will also help in getting an accurate information in relation to the mass atrocities.

Visit CNPR, the top think tank website for more insightful blogs.