The United Nations was established in order to enhance peace and stability in the world. The foundations of the UN, and particularly its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), are worthy and should be supported. However, something has gone badly wrong with the way the UN operates.

In most organisations, members are expected to support, in word and deed, the principles for which that organisation exists. If you join a club, you adhere to the membership rules. If you belong to a political party, you support that party’s philosophy. What is blatantly apparent is that many of the UN’s members fail to live up to the organisation’s values.

Universal rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948 was established, as the document itself states, “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”. Member states of the UN have “pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms”. These universal rights and freedoms include for all people:

These aspirations contained in the UDHR are reflected in the UN Charter, which is legally binding upon all UN members.  Yet the Charter is consistently violated by members such as Burma, Cuba, Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  In addition to this, covenants and treaties are legally binding upon states which have signed and ratified them, yet to take one example, the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are broken with virtual impunity by signatories such as Algeria, China, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe.  

Surely the status and influence of these members within the UN system should be downgraded according to their unwillingness to adhere to the UN’s objectives.  For example they could lose rights to sit on committees, to table or sign motions, to speak in debates or to vote. 

There are precedents for punishing member states which violate the UN Charter.  South Africa had its membership of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) denied in 1970s and 1980s, and Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Liberia and Sierra Leone all had their membership of the UNGA denied in 1990s. But few other countries have been disciplined. The UNGA would be a far more effective body if regimes which wilfully undermined its Charter were excluded.

On the other hand, there are cases where people have manifestly chosen their representatives, for example Taiwan and Tibet, yet they have been unable to gain membership of the UN. Another example of this is Burma, where the people overwhelmingly elected the National League for Democracy (NLD) under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 1990. But Burma is currently represented at the UN by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military regime, and this despite the fact that every year for over a decade this regime has earned the UN’s strongest condemnation for its human rights abuses.  Article 6 of the UN Charter states, “A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organisation by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council”. There is a case, then, for the expulsion of Burma’s current representatives to the UN and the acceptance of the NLD’s nominees, since the NLD is the democratically elected government of Burma. Perhaps China would veto such a move.  If so they should be asked to explain why. As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself has asked:

“Is the United Nations General Assembly meant for the lawful representatives of the people of various nations, or is it meant for just any old government that happens to have come to power?”

Structural Problems
Allowing UN members to break with impunity the treaties they have signed results in absurd situations, amply demonstrated by the current composition of the Commission on Human Rights, a sub-group of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). This 53-member body now includes China, Cuba, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria. For 2002/3 the Chairmanship was given to Libya, while the United States has been voted out of the Commission altogether.

As a result, in 2002 for the first time in many years the Commission on Human Rights failed to put forward a resolution critical of China’s human rights record. This is despite China’s egregious violations of UN treaties and the claim by Amnesty International, in 2001, that China had executed more people than all other countries put together, totalling 2,468 executions. No country put forward a resolution, and the United States was unable to, and so China was left to conclude that its view of human rights was now in “the mainstream”.

In addition, the imbalance on the Commission on Human Rights in favour of oppressive regimes has enabled those regimes to use the system for accrediting Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) at the UN to their advantage. According to US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, “oppressive regimes are funding and securing approval for government-sanctioned and government-selected groups credentialed as NGOs but which are actually promoting the regimes’ agenda. They are creating coalitions to remove legitimate human rights groups who are critical of their poor human rights records.”(1)

Time for reform
This system does not make sense. The idea that responsibility for promoting human rights lies with countries such as China and Sudan who are in flagrant violation of the Declaration is bizarre. Furthermore, the United States, which is not only the major world power but also perhaps the strongest defender of the Declaration, has no seat on the Commission. Reform is overdue.

Re-defining Sovereignty 
The UN’s inability to uphold the principles of its declarations and to enforce the provisions of its treaties is largely rooted in an out-dated and inadequate conception of national sovereignty.  Currently under international law, recognition and legitimacy are given to a regime on the basis that it has effective control over a given territory.  In other words, might is right.  This definition of sovereignty is pragmatic and in the past it may have been unrealistic to call for alternatives.  However to continue to rely on this definition makes the world a more dangerous place than it has ever been, as rogue regimes and oppressive states are granted undue influence.  The definition of sovereignty in international law needs to be rewritten so that it is closer to its basis in reality.

Sovereignty belongs to and comes from the people.  A regime that rules with their consent is sovereign and this should be respected internationally.  The measure of whether a regime rules with consent is not necessarily through elections or universal suffrage.  But a regime which wilfully and persistently violates the fundamental rights of the people under it in order to retain or increase its position of governance cannot be considered sovereign; it is impossible that people will consent to being thus violated.

Following World War II, the greatest threats to world peace were felt to come from aggressor states that would invade and tyrannise other countries.  And so the UN Security Council was constituted to authorise force against any country which violated the sovereignty of another by invading it.  However, it was also agreed as a basic doctrine of international law that the UN could not authorise force to intervene in a country’s “internal affairs”.  This means that a sovereign state which is not an explicit threat to any other state has exclusive jurisdiction over its territory. This position in itself is eminently justifiable.  However, is it disastrous when combined with the misapplication of sovereignty.  Since World War II the suffering and misery inflicted upon people by aggressive invading states has been far exceeded by the suffering and misery of peoples caught in interminable civil wars and those living under barbarous and oppressive regimes.  Threats to people today are far more likely to come from their own government than from a foreign one.  If the first duty of law is to protect people’s well-being by promoting justice, then international law is failing utterly for the majority of the world’s population.

To open the possibility for a remedy to this then either:

1)      the definition of sovereignty must be rewritten in international law; that it is predicated upon people and it is bestowed upon governments only through people’s consent;

OR

2)      the right for the UN to use force should be extended so it applies not only against those regimes which threaten the security of people in other states, but also against regimes which threaten the security of their own people.

In either case, there will then be a legal basis for effective intervention against regimes which persistently violates the most fundamental human rights.  Theoretically the UN already has the right to uphold human rights where member states have conferred sovereignty upon the UN by signing international treaties and covenants.  However, the range of options available to the UN to uphold these rights is extremely limited, especially the use of force.  In much of the world, sovereignty is shared then between a regime which has no interest in justice and a UN which has no power to administer it.  This imbalance in international law does not protect people so much as it protects tyrants. Territorial integrity is over-emphasised at the expense of self-determination.  And so if the law is not improved, then the law itself becomes an obstacle to justice and ultimately to peace.

East Timor
The case of East Timor illustrates the suffering caused by confusion over sovereignty. Almost every year since Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, the UN passed resolutions condemning the invasion, calling on Indonesia to withdraw from East Timor and demanding a peaceful negotiation and the right of self-determination for East Timor. Furthermore, Indonesia’s sovereignty over East Timor was never recognised by the UN. Up until the referendum in East Timor in 1999, the UN recognised Portugal, the former colonial ruler, as the legitimate sovereign power. However, it never acted to enforce its resolutions.

Moreover, when negotiations finally took place in 1999 to prepare for a referendum, the three parties were the UN, the Portuguese and Indonesia, not the East Timorese themselves. The UN gave responsibility for security to Indonesia, despite dire warnings of the consequences, and when the Indonesian military and their militia unleashed a wave of violence after the referendum result, the UN insisted it could not send in an international peacekeeping force without the invitation of Indonesia because to do so would be an invasion of sovereignty – despite the fact that, officially, Portugal was still the sovereign power in the UN’s terms. Finally a force was sent to restore order and help East Timor implement its decision to become an independent nation, but only with the reluctant invitation from the Indonesian President BJ Habibie.

Enforcing resolutions
Without enforcing standards of membership, there will always be problems enforcing  resolutions. This has been highlighted by the case of Iraq.  Since 1991 numerous resolutions have been passed in regard to Iraq, demanding an end to human rights violations, full and unhindered access for weapons inspectors, and the return of all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands, and all of these resolutions have been defiantly ignored by Iraq. However, Article 25 of the UN Charter, which is legally binding on all member states, reads, “The Members of the UN agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council…”  Manifest failure to do this led President Bush to say:

“All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honoured and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”

It is alienating for British people to be part of the current UN structures when many of the member states do not abide by UN principles. The UN’s website has the slogan “United Nations. It’s your world”. But at the moment it does not feel as if it is our world.

The Conservative Party should advocate the following: 

1. Membership of the UN General Assembly should be given only to those countries which accept, in theory and in practice, the principles of the UN;  this means a willingness to enforce Article 4(1) of the UN’s Charter, that “Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgement of the Organisation, are able and willing to carry out these obligations”;
2. That UNGA member states that continuously flout the UN’s principles should have their accreditation withdrawn;
3. Membership of committees and commissions should be determined by whether or not the country lives by the rules of that body, rather than simply by geographical representation;
4. Security Council resolutions should be enforced if the organisation is to have credibility;
5. Sovereignty should be re-defined on the basis that it lies ultimately with people, not governments.

Countries which continue to flout the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international agreements should be barred from membership of the UN General Assembly until they can agree to adhere to the rules of the organisation. Then the UN may start to make progress towards seeing its values adhered to in the world. And then people in every member state can truly say “The United Nations: It’s our world”.