welltemperedsubject
04-22-03, 08:49 AM
An interesting article on the role of the United Nations.
The Independent
March 6, 2003
LENGTH: 1530 words
HEADLINE: IRAQ CRISIS: THE UN MAY NOT BE PERFECT, BUT IT'S THE BEST HOPE THE
WORLD CURRENTLY HAS
BYLINE: SHASHI THAROOR
BODY:
___A FEW days ago, as BBC's Radio 5 treated its listeners to A Day in the Life
of the United Nations, an interviewer rather glibly asked me: "So how does the
UN feel about being seen as the i' word, irrelevant?" He was about to go on when
I interrupted him. "As far as we're concerned," I said, "the i' word is
indispensable'."
___It was not just a debating point. Those of us who toil every day at the
headquarters of the United Nations have become a little exasperated at seeing
our institutional obituaries in the press. The present contretemps over Iraq has
led some to evoke comparisons to the League of Nations, a body created with
great hopes at the end of the First World War, which was reduced to debating the
standardisation of European railway gauges the day the Germans marched into
Poland. Some have suggested that the UN's irrelevance is beyond dispute, and
that all that remains is the mode of its demonstration: whether we will confirm
our irrelevance by obliging the United States or ensure our irrelevance by
failing to oblige the US.
___Such concerns are, to say the least, grossly overstated. First, reducing the
Iraq issue to a question of whether the world organisation is obliging the US or
not overlooks the key message of President George Bush's appearance before the
UN General Assembly in September last year. In calling on the Security Council
to take action against Iraq, he framed the problem not as one of unilateral US
wishes but as an issue of the implementation of United Nations security council
resolutions. The UN and the earlier decisions of its security council remain at
the heart of the case against Iraq.
___Second, the League of Nations analogy does not apply. By the late Thirties,
two of the three most powerful countries in the world at the time - the United
States and Germany (the third being Great Britain) - did not belong to the
league, which therefore had no influence on their actions. The league died
because it had become irrelevant to the global geopolitics of the era. By
contrast, every country on earth belongs to the UN, including the world's only
superpower, the United States. Every newly-independent state seeks entry almost
as its first order of governmental business; its seat at the UN is the most
fundamental confirmation of its membership in the comity of nations. The United
Nations is now seen as so essential to the future of the world that Switzerland,
long a holdout because of its fierce neutrality, decided by referendum in 2002
to end its isolation and join. No club that attracts every eligible member can
easily be described as irrelevant.
___Third, the authorisation (or not) of war in Iraq is not the only gauge of the
security council's relevance to that situation. Just four years ago, the Nato
alliance bombed Yugoslavia over its Government's conduct in Kosovo, without the
approval of, or even reference to, the security council. My interviewer's "i"
word was heard widely in those days; Kosovo, it was said, had demonstrated the
UN's irrelevance. But the issue of Kosovo returned to the security council, not
just when an attempt to condemn that bombing failed, but when arrangements had
to be found to administer Kosovo after the war. Only the security council could
approve those arrangements in a way that conferred international legitimacy upon
them and encouraged all nations to extend support and resources to the
enterprise. And only one body could be entrusted with the responsibility to run
the civilian administration of Kosovo: the United Nations.
___I am not suggesting the UN will be offered, or would wish to take on, such a
task in a post-war Iraq. But it is important to remember that this would not be
the first time it had been written off during a war, only to be found essential
to the ensuing peace.
___In penning the premature epitaphs for the UN, let us not forget the soaring
aspirations the framers of the UN Charter set themselves as they created the
world body from the ashes of the Second World War. The relevance of the United
Nations does not stand or fall on its conduct on one issue alone. No doubt what
happens in the security council on Iraq is of vital importance to the UN's role
in maintaining international peace and security.
___But when this crisis has passed, the world will still be facing (to use
Secretary General Kofi Annan's phrase) innumerable "problems without passports",
problems of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation
of our common environment, of contagious disease and chronic starvation, of
human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement.
These are problems that no one country, however powerful, can solve on its own,
and which are yet the shared responsibility of humankind. They cry out for
solutions that, like the problems themselves, also cross frontiers. The United
Nations exists to find these solutions through the common endeavour of all
States. It is the one indispensable global organisation in our globalising
world.
___And no, it is not perfect. It has acted unwisely at times, and failed to act
at others; one need only think of the "safe areas" in Bosnia and the genocide in
Rwanda for instances of each. It has sometimes been too divided to succeed, as
appears to be the case in the security council today. But the United Nations, at
its best, is a mirror of the world: it reflects our divisions and disagreements
as well as our hopes and convictions. Sometimes it only muddles through. As Dag
Hammarskjold, the UN's great second Secretary General, put it, the United
Nations was not created to take mankind to paradise, but merely to save humanity
from hell. As it attempts to do so, the United Nations provides an indispensable
forum to bring states together to tackle the great problems of our time.
___Some say the Security Council is too much in thrall to its most powerful
member. The debates over Iraq have proved that is not always the case; but even
if it were, it is far better to have a world organisation anchored in
geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to
be effective.
___A United Nations that provides the vital political and diplomatic framework
for the actions of its most powerful member, while casting them in the context
of international law and legitimacy (and bringing to bear on them the
perspectives and concerns of its universal membership) is a United Nations that
cannot be anything but relevant to the world in which we live.
___Large sections of the world's people require desperately needed help from the
United Nations to surmount problems they cannot overcome on their own. As these
words are written, civil war rages in Cote d'Ivoire and sputters in the Congo,
and long-running conflicts may be close to permanent solution in Cyprus and
Sierra Leone. The arduous task of nation-building proceeds fitfully in
Afghanistan, the Balkans and East Timor. Twenty million refugees and displaced
persons from Palestine to Liberia and beyond depend on the UN for shelter and
succour. Decades of development in Africa are being wiped out by the scourge of
HIV/Aids, and the Millennium Development Goals, agreed with much fanfare in the
largest gathering of heads of government in human history, the UN's Millennium
Summit of September 2000, lag behind the pace needed to fulfil them.
___The resources needed to eliminate poverty, to bring girls into school, to
promote health and clean drinking water, have simply not been made available at
the levels required. None of these goals can be met without the support of
ordinary people around the world, the informed publics who sustain the political
will of their Governments. And yet they hear little about these issues, whose
feeble echoes are drowned out in the drumbeat over that other "i" word: Iraq.
___The media bears a vital share of the responsibility for this. The cliche
about television news is supposed to be: "If it bleeds, it leads". Today, radio,
TV and even the print media appear to be working on the presumption that: "If it
might bleed tomorrow, it must lead today." No wonder that, in the single-minded
obsession with just one issue on the UN's vast agenda, a reporter can presume to
speak of the UN's putative irrelevance. When I hear that "i" word I am reminded
of an old story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam finds Eve is
becoming a bit indifferent to him. So he asks her: "Eve, is there someone else?"
___One could well ask the same question about the United Nations. Is there any
other institution that brings all the countries of the world together to pursue
collectively the security and welfare so essential to our common humanity? This
is why I am proud to use the other "i" word, and to affirm the UN's
indispensability as the only effective instrument the world has to confront the
challenges that will remain when Iraq has passed from the headlines.
___Shashi Tharoor is the award- winning author of seven books about his native
India, including three novels. He has served the United Nations since 1978, and
is under-secretary general for communications and public information. These are
his personal views.
The Independent
March 6, 2003
LENGTH: 1530 words
HEADLINE: IRAQ CRISIS: THE UN MAY NOT BE PERFECT, BUT IT'S THE BEST HOPE THE
WORLD CURRENTLY HAS
BYLINE: SHASHI THAROOR
BODY:
___A FEW days ago, as BBC's Radio 5 treated its listeners to A Day in the Life
of the United Nations, an interviewer rather glibly asked me: "So how does the
UN feel about being seen as the i' word, irrelevant?" He was about to go on when
I interrupted him. "As far as we're concerned," I said, "the i' word is
indispensable'."
___It was not just a debating point. Those of us who toil every day at the
headquarters of the United Nations have become a little exasperated at seeing
our institutional obituaries in the press. The present contretemps over Iraq has
led some to evoke comparisons to the League of Nations, a body created with
great hopes at the end of the First World War, which was reduced to debating the
standardisation of European railway gauges the day the Germans marched into
Poland. Some have suggested that the UN's irrelevance is beyond dispute, and
that all that remains is the mode of its demonstration: whether we will confirm
our irrelevance by obliging the United States or ensure our irrelevance by
failing to oblige the US.
___Such concerns are, to say the least, grossly overstated. First, reducing the
Iraq issue to a question of whether the world organisation is obliging the US or
not overlooks the key message of President George Bush's appearance before the
UN General Assembly in September last year. In calling on the Security Council
to take action against Iraq, he framed the problem not as one of unilateral US
wishes but as an issue of the implementation of United Nations security council
resolutions. The UN and the earlier decisions of its security council remain at
the heart of the case against Iraq.
___Second, the League of Nations analogy does not apply. By the late Thirties,
two of the three most powerful countries in the world at the time - the United
States and Germany (the third being Great Britain) - did not belong to the
league, which therefore had no influence on their actions. The league died
because it had become irrelevant to the global geopolitics of the era. By
contrast, every country on earth belongs to the UN, including the world's only
superpower, the United States. Every newly-independent state seeks entry almost
as its first order of governmental business; its seat at the UN is the most
fundamental confirmation of its membership in the comity of nations. The United
Nations is now seen as so essential to the future of the world that Switzerland,
long a holdout because of its fierce neutrality, decided by referendum in 2002
to end its isolation and join. No club that attracts every eligible member can
easily be described as irrelevant.
___Third, the authorisation (or not) of war in Iraq is not the only gauge of the
security council's relevance to that situation. Just four years ago, the Nato
alliance bombed Yugoslavia over its Government's conduct in Kosovo, without the
approval of, or even reference to, the security council. My interviewer's "i"
word was heard widely in those days; Kosovo, it was said, had demonstrated the
UN's irrelevance. But the issue of Kosovo returned to the security council, not
just when an attempt to condemn that bombing failed, but when arrangements had
to be found to administer Kosovo after the war. Only the security council could
approve those arrangements in a way that conferred international legitimacy upon
them and encouraged all nations to extend support and resources to the
enterprise. And only one body could be entrusted with the responsibility to run
the civilian administration of Kosovo: the United Nations.
___I am not suggesting the UN will be offered, or would wish to take on, such a
task in a post-war Iraq. But it is important to remember that this would not be
the first time it had been written off during a war, only to be found essential
to the ensuing peace.
___In penning the premature epitaphs for the UN, let us not forget the soaring
aspirations the framers of the UN Charter set themselves as they created the
world body from the ashes of the Second World War. The relevance of the United
Nations does not stand or fall on its conduct on one issue alone. No doubt what
happens in the security council on Iraq is of vital importance to the UN's role
in maintaining international peace and security.
___But when this crisis has passed, the world will still be facing (to use
Secretary General Kofi Annan's phrase) innumerable "problems without passports",
problems of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation
of our common environment, of contagious disease and chronic starvation, of
human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement.
These are problems that no one country, however powerful, can solve on its own,
and which are yet the shared responsibility of humankind. They cry out for
solutions that, like the problems themselves, also cross frontiers. The United
Nations exists to find these solutions through the common endeavour of all
States. It is the one indispensable global organisation in our globalising
world.
___And no, it is not perfect. It has acted unwisely at times, and failed to act
at others; one need only think of the "safe areas" in Bosnia and the genocide in
Rwanda for instances of each. It has sometimes been too divided to succeed, as
appears to be the case in the security council today. But the United Nations, at
its best, is a mirror of the world: it reflects our divisions and disagreements
as well as our hopes and convictions. Sometimes it only muddles through. As Dag
Hammarskjold, the UN's great second Secretary General, put it, the United
Nations was not created to take mankind to paradise, but merely to save humanity
from hell. As it attempts to do so, the United Nations provides an indispensable
forum to bring states together to tackle the great problems of our time.
___Some say the Security Council is too much in thrall to its most powerful
member. The debates over Iraq have proved that is not always the case; but even
if it were, it is far better to have a world organisation anchored in
geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to
be effective.
___A United Nations that provides the vital political and diplomatic framework
for the actions of its most powerful member, while casting them in the context
of international law and legitimacy (and bringing to bear on them the
perspectives and concerns of its universal membership) is a United Nations that
cannot be anything but relevant to the world in which we live.
___Large sections of the world's people require desperately needed help from the
United Nations to surmount problems they cannot overcome on their own. As these
words are written, civil war rages in Cote d'Ivoire and sputters in the Congo,
and long-running conflicts may be close to permanent solution in Cyprus and
Sierra Leone. The arduous task of nation-building proceeds fitfully in
Afghanistan, the Balkans and East Timor. Twenty million refugees and displaced
persons from Palestine to Liberia and beyond depend on the UN for shelter and
succour. Decades of development in Africa are being wiped out by the scourge of
HIV/Aids, and the Millennium Development Goals, agreed with much fanfare in the
largest gathering of heads of government in human history, the UN's Millennium
Summit of September 2000, lag behind the pace needed to fulfil them.
___The resources needed to eliminate poverty, to bring girls into school, to
promote health and clean drinking water, have simply not been made available at
the levels required. None of these goals can be met without the support of
ordinary people around the world, the informed publics who sustain the political
will of their Governments. And yet they hear little about these issues, whose
feeble echoes are drowned out in the drumbeat over that other "i" word: Iraq.
___The media bears a vital share of the responsibility for this. The cliche
about television news is supposed to be: "If it bleeds, it leads". Today, radio,
TV and even the print media appear to be working on the presumption that: "If it
might bleed tomorrow, it must lead today." No wonder that, in the single-minded
obsession with just one issue on the UN's vast agenda, a reporter can presume to
speak of the UN's putative irrelevance. When I hear that "i" word I am reminded
of an old story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam finds Eve is
becoming a bit indifferent to him. So he asks her: "Eve, is there someone else?"
___One could well ask the same question about the United Nations. Is there any
other institution that brings all the countries of the world together to pursue
collectively the security and welfare so essential to our common humanity? This
is why I am proud to use the other "i" word, and to affirm the UN's
indispensability as the only effective instrument the world has to confront the
challenges that will remain when Iraq has passed from the headlines.
___Shashi Tharoor is the award- winning author of seven books about his native
India, including three novels. He has served the United Nations since 1978, and
is under-secretary general for communications and public information. These are
his personal views.