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Public Statements The UN is only as good as its member states
The US-led war on Iraq brought, inevitably, renewed debate about the relevance of the United Nations. Both proponents and opponents of the war have made cases for UN irrelevancy based on its failure to act - either to sanction or prevent the war. The most common response to these accusations is to argue that the UN is only as strong as its members allow it to be - that it is not the UN which has failed, but its members which have. Both of these arguments are built on the flawed premise that the significance and importance of the UN should be judged solely on its ability to enforce its resolutions. In fact, this ability is strictly limited under the UN's founding document, the Charter. This is because the United Nations is not a world government but an inter-governmental body composed of independent countries. These countries have agreed on a Charter, which sets the institution's goals of maintaining peace and improving the living conditions of people everywhere. They have also agreed on the machinery through which these goals can be realized. But the UN's 191 member countries have kept the final say on implementation of these goals for themselves. Whenever the United Nations passes a resolution on an issue of global concern, it is the UN's member countries which must act to implement this resolution domestically - and they cannot be forced into doing so except under very specific circumstances. The reason is that when countries join the UN, they maintain their right to control their own domestic affairs. No country would have ever agreed to join an institution if it meant sacrificing its independence. The only two cases in which the UN can authorize force to back up its resolutions are when it is responding to threats to international peace and security and acts of aggression from one country towards another, and this can only be done through the Security Council and as a last resort. In examining the situation in Iraq since the first Gulf War, the Security Council agreed that there have been serious concerns and passed a plethora of resolutions urging Iraq to comply with accepted norms of international behaviour. But Iraq, like all other member countries, is independent. The Security Council determined that, egregious as Sadam Hussein's regime may be, it did not constitute a threat to international peace and security and no enforcement action could be taken. In recent months, several countries, led by the US, pressured the Security Council to think otherwise. Arguments and evidence were presented and refuted and it became clear during the winter that the Council would not sanction a war. The US and Britain then opted out of the process. The Security Council played its intended role, but some of its members refused to play along. In essence, the UN provides a framework through which countries can jointly address pressing international concerns. This framework has led not only to the establishment of many important norms and standards, but also to the creation of many highly successful specialized agencies: UNICEF, which protects the health and rights of children; the WHO which works to prevent, mitigate and eliminate disease; the World Food Programme, which works to ensure food security where it is needed most, to name but a few. This framework has proved quite effective at enabling a much deeper understanding of key international problems and determining more concerted, practical and creative approaches to dealing with them. Since a majority of the world's countries must vote in favour of a General Assembly resolution for it to be adopted, the moral pressure brought to bear on those countries which act contrary to the majority is significant - not only are they susceptible to the condemnation of other countries, they are also open targets for the vast number of civil society groups who follow UN proceedings carefully and work to ensure the implementation of resolutions and treaties. The relevance of the UN, then, lies most prominently in its ability to deepen our understanding of global problems, delineate viable solutions and create rules, mechanisms and dialogue which guide countries towards peace and people towards greater prosperity. Its relevance also rests in the moral weight and suasion with which it imbues its decisions and the ability of its specialized agencies and programmes to make significant inroads in addressing human rights abuses, disease, food and water scarcity, lack of education and environmental degradation, among others. Ideally, the world community should also be able to take action on rogue regimes which disregard the rights of their citizens and, indeed, there are international norms developing on the global 'responsibility to protect.' But these are slow in coming because the UN is, after all, a creation of intensely independent countries. It may be disheartening to realize that some of these, some of time, will be immune to the opinions and arguments of their fellow states, but it should be encouraging to recognize that most countries play by the rules much of the time. In the context of the bloody history of nation states, this is indeed an accomplishment.
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