Spread the love

By Devendra Gautam

At a time of intensive discussions about reforms in the United Nations (UN) to make way for the entry of certain countries in ascendance in the much powerful, veto-wielding exclusive clique, the Security Council, it will be worthwhile to read or reread the United Nations Charter, which gave birth to the ‘world body’ on the rubble of wars and a spectacular failure of the League of Nations.

Article 2(2) of the charter states: All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

Article 2(4) does not lag far behind when it comes to standing for higher ideals like territorial integrity and political independence of a state, at least on paper. It goes: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

How is a citizen of a dismembered country with its violated borders supposed to take Article 2(4), if not with a grain of salt?

The charter is quite heavy on ideals like democracy, human rights, the dignity of the human person, the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small. This is but natural because the UN came into being from the ruins of two wars where might was right (as always) and a spectacular failure of the League of Nations to intervene in many conflicts, making way for World War II, the invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Article 23(1) of the charter envisions a Security Council, thereby laying the foundation stone for an unequal world based on ‘sovereign inequality’ of member-states. It states: The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council.

It adds: The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being especially paid, in the first instance to the contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.

Article 27(3) presents the proof of the slide of the ‘world body’ into a fief of high and mighty nations by giving veto powers to five permanent members of the Security Council. It goes: Votes in the Security Council on non-procedural matters “shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the councurring vote of the permanent members.

This provision reminds this scribe of George Orwell’s seminal work, the Animal Farm, where the reigning Pig, while waging a struggle against the sapien owner of the farm, declares all animals of the farm to be equal. As the plot thickens, the Pig develops a cordial relation with the owner, begins exploiting other animals to the hilt and makes significant changes in the guiding principle in keeping with ground reality, stating that all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than the others, apparently to safeguard dynastical interests. In the end, the Pig starts a dynastical rule by declaring that only some animals are equal.

Our beloved country is also one big animal farm for certain dynasties, isn’t it?

In the ‘world body’ also, only five permanent UNSC members with veto powers are equal. Thanks to perpetual conflicts of interest among these members, the world continues to bleed, in Gaza and other parts of the Mideast, along the Russia-Ukraine border, in parts of Africa and several other conflict hotspots. A world reeling under serious existential threats like internecine wars, rising temperatures, climate change, prolonged drought, food insecurity and abject poverty needs a real world body that provides a level playing field for small and island nations like Nepal, which have been reeling under several neocolonial nightmares, including disproportionate effects of climate change in the form of phenomena like excessive rains, prolonged drought, frequent wildfires, rapid snow melts and glacial lake outburst floods.

Countries in a post-colonial world do not need self-styled champions of the Global South to speak for them, for they too know the ways of the world. Rather, the Global South needs a platform that regards all nation-states as equal in terms of sovereignty, regardless of their size and might. Taking in a nation or two to the clique called the Security Council in recognition of their ascendance by removing one or two from it will not make the world body more just and equal in the eyes of states on the margins.

In a world where Matsyanyaya is the world order, in a world where big fish eat little fish and big nations gobble up small nations, why does humanity need the League of Nations 2.0?

Let a long and arduous process of the making of a truly representative world body begin from serious and ongoing interdisciplinary discussions on this very question.