By Madi Jobarteh
Yes, one can point to UNRWA and several other UN agencies around the world that are providing massive humanitarian and protection services to millions of impoverished, marginalised, and vulnerable women, children, refugees, and the displaced among other victims. Lots of communities and individuals enjoy education, healthcare, economic opportunities, and other socioeconomic benefits through UN programmes. Through its human rights mechanisms, several political actors, journalists, academics, human rights activists and so on have enjoyed protection and support from the UN.
Through its courts, conferences and declarations, transparency and accountability have been established and promoted on several issues, places and on the situation of millions of people on account of their race, religion, sex, origin, or other status. Many more actions, programmes, and events can be cited to rightfully justify the value and contribution of the UN to the promotion and protection of global peace, human development, and justice.
Without these interventions there is no doubt that the world would potentially be in a more grave condition. But it must be noted that these dire conditions themselves which have warranted the crucial intervention of the UN are avoidable were the UN better structured. These dire social, economic, and political conditions with which the UN is hugely preoccupied are in themselves the consequences of the actions of the very members of the UN, especially those so-called five permanent members and others. For example, UNRWA is indeed necessary in Gaza but simply because of UN failure since 1948 to ensure the creation of an independent Palestinian state existing in peace next to an Israeli state. The inability of the UN to achieve this goal is precisely thanks to the abuse of veto power by primarily the US, France, and UK, individually or jointly at various times.
Thus, the single biggest threat to the UN and the attainment of its goals and the consolidation of its gains is the very structure of the UN itself, inherently. This is because the UN was structured with the mindset and interests of the victorious colonialists and imperialists in 1945. In essence the UN was structured on the basis of the defunct League of Nations which was a colonial and imperialist organisation. While the League became irrelevant and impotent in the wake of the Second World War and therefore needs replacement, the new victors of that war did not want to relinquish their colonial, imperialistic and hegemonic supremacy and control. Â
Outraged by the Holocaust and the inhuman conditions of the Second World War which itself was a colonial and imperialist enterprise, the UN was created out of its ashes with a view to establishing an international system for justice, peace, and progress. Built on sacred principles and lofty goals, the UN was unfortunately structured in a way that it became the greatest obstacle of its own objectives.
For example, the creation of the Security Council with powers that overshadow the General Assembly, and placed at the mercy of only five so-called permanent members is where the UN has been turned into a self-destructive entity. The idea of permanent members with veto powers is not only undemocratic but also prone to abuse and manipulation. The fact that these five so-called permanent members are also either colonial or imperialistic or both with hegemonic intentions has therefore created a stage for the world to be held hostage by any one or all of them.
Needless to say, today, this UN as constituted is untenable and inimical to the very principles and objectives of the organisation. It needs total overhaul. This structure has turned the UN into a fraud placing the entire globe effectively under the mercy and control of only one nation among the so-called permanent members. It takes only one No-vote by one of the five permanent members to reject what is good for the world!
This was proven once again on June 4 as the United States became the only nation in the Security Council to use its veto power to reject the draft resolution for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Since 1945, the world has seen multiple times how the US, UK, France, Russia, and China, individually or a combination of two or more of them veto UN resolutions. Whether it is Palestine, climate change, trade or peacebuilding among other issues and objectives, these so-called permanent members have stifled progress and peace on their terms against the rest of the world!
Their veto is usually not guided by any consideration for human rights, international law, peace and security, or the survival of the planet and people. Rather, these nations have used their veto to perpetuate their colonial and imperialist ambitions to the detriment of the peoples, peace, and justice in the world. Effectively, these five nations have hijacked the United Nations into a tool against itself but for their selfish interests!
That aside, the lone vote against this resolution by the US once again establishes the undiluted and unequivocal fact that the US remains the greatest single threat to international peace and human rights. This is only possible simply because the US has veto power thanks to the crooked structure of the UN. It has empowered the US like the rest of the other permanent members to hold the world hostage in total contravention of international law and human rights. This despicable veto by the US once again highlights the urgent need for the total overhaul of the United Nations and the international system.
Therefore, the time has come for the creation of a proper and fit organisation with the sole interest and for the service of the world. The world needs an organisation which upholds the sovereign equality of states and driven by nothing other than the pursuit of justice, peace, and shared prosperity for all. The world needs an international system founded on and driven by human rights-based laws, principles, institutions, and objectives. The world needs a body in which all nations hold the card equally for the destiny of the world and not only a few privileged ones with diabolical intentions.
The conditions that prevailed in 1945 cannot and must not be the basis for the future of the world. In 1945 most of the world was under colonialism and imperialism perpetrated by European powers and their offshoots including the US, Canada and Australia together constituting the West. The end of the war ushered into the Cold War era in which both the western colonial and imperialist powers on one hand, and the eastern communist powers on the other hand sought to impose their hegemony on the world. While both sides proclaim freedom and peace, they conceived these ideals only in terms of advancing their hegemonic interests. Since then, they have hijacked the UN to use it as a weapon of conquest and domination.
Today, Africa in particular and the Global South in general should not accept the 1945 dispensation. Africa must demand a new world order. Africa should abandon the UN so long as it remains in its present form. Not only is Africa the largest regional bloc in the United Nations but also it is the weakest and most marginalised in the organisation. Yet, Africa is the only innocent entity in the UN that has neither enslaved nor colonised or invaded or occupied any foreign territory or threatened global peace and security. Therefore, if there should be any permanent member with veto power in the United Nations, it should be only Africa!
Until then, the United Nations has been a scam. It is a weapon against itself. It is unjust, undemocratic, and colonial and imperialistic in design and intention. It is untenable and counterproductive. The UN created in 1945 must be dismantled and discarded.
