The end of the Cold War for the United Nations was a time for revitalization with in the United Nations. There was a strong belief that cooperation among United Nations member states would help the ill-United Nations gains international leverage on issues related to world’s peace and security. And with the blessing of the United Nations success in the first Gulf war. United Nations credibility which was lost during the Cold War became reborn as UN was able to bring consensus within the Security Council on how to deal with the Saddam Hussein aggression on Kuwait. The principle of collective security finally brought United Nations’ member states together for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War. However, it was not long before such cooperation faded away. The scope of civil wars in the 1990s again brought many political differences among the United Nations members to resurface again. All these complicating the efforts of the United Nations to deal with challenges of the century, there was a great deal unpreparedness on the part of the UN to deal with issues of Unilateralism, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons proliferations, human rights abuses, poverty, illiteracy, climate changes, and terrorism. It immediately became clear that the United Nations and its member states were faced with many challenges then before in the United Nations’ history. For better understanding of these enormous challenges, each of them will be addressed separately to enhance how each affects the United Nations capability to maintain peace and security of the world (Puchala, 2007, p. 1-2).
A) Disagreements among member states (unilateralism & multilateralism)
Political differences, national sovereignty and prevalence of national interest to pursue within the United Nations put most states at odd with each other at the UN and in real essence; it complicates the organization efforts to build a consensus within the Security Council which the United Nations needs to function effectively as required by its Charter. For UN as an organization built to function on consensual basis, political differences and states’ interests always causes member states to put their national interest first, thus putting the UN interest at odd and as a result, United Nations looses it way as well as it ability to hold up to it principles of maintaining the world peace and security. The recent experience of United States invasion of Iraq with out UN authorization is a real example on how it is so true to say that there is no UN with out member states; and because membership of the UN is composed of sovereign nations. It is however instrumental to bring national interests and UN interests together which is not easy thing to come about, and which was really what happened with regard to the United States unilateral decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Whether Saddam Hussein was a threat to world’s security or whether it was a desire within the Bush administration to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime (Puchala, 2007, p. 93-96). It was clear that disagreement within the UN member states on definition of threat that President Saddam Hussein posed to world peace. The other UN member states never saw Saddam Hussein the way he was viewed by the United States government. Therefore, there was a complete divergent views between UN as an organization and United States government whose it interest was to pursue it political interest despite what UN reluctance to Iraq invasion by the United States led coalition. Out the United States unilateral decision to invade Iraq without backing of the UN brought the old theory of collective security into question. In a layman understanding, the refusal of the United States to seek consensus from other UN member states was a contradiction to the notion of collective security which calls all member states to act collectively to protect world peace and security. Whatever anybody may say, it is clear that other states have their own political and strategic interests which they would like to pursue out side the UN and when this becomes the norms, UN relevance would be brought to nothing as individual states will start to operate in pursuit of their own national interests and disregarding the UN forum (Puchala, 2007, p. 5-6).
B) nuclear weapons and their proliferations
Although there have been fewer occasions in which nuclear weapons have been used in human history. The challenge and threats posed by nuclear weapons are becoming a main concern for the United Nations and it member states. Since the end of the Cold War, stock files of chemical, biological and other components of deadly weapons are at large. Without proper storage, the real prospect of these deadly weapons and their parts to end up in the hands of terrorists is real. For UN and member states, the issue of nuclear weapons and their prospects to be used by radical terrorist groups like Aqaeda and other groups put the issue among the challenges that UN would have to deal with in this technological century where technology and skills that comes with it could easily fester the ability of terrorists to manufacture these deadly nuclear weapons from already available stock files.
A part from nuclear weapons being used by terrorists, the number of countries with nuclear weapons has increased exponentially than what it was during the last fifty years, and making it scary, is the fact that most of these nations, Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea and possibly Iran are located in the volatile part of the world where conflict could erupt at any time. The effort of IAEA to combat the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation has by far made different. However, there is no universal protocol on how to enforce the technology related to nuclear weapons and this make it difficult for IAEA to monitor how member states could use nuclear technology exclusively for civilian purposes. Secondly, for those nations with nuclear weapons, few have adhered to None Proliferation Treaty and Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which also makes it so hard for IAEA to standardize the enforcement of nuclear weapons protocol especially for those nations that have them (Barash, 2002, P. 85-109).
C) Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction
The issue of sustainable development and security especially in the developing world is a major concern for the UN. The wide spread level of poverty in Africa, South American and other remote parts of the world is believed as part of a root cause of conflict that plague these regions of the world. In Africa for instance, most conflicts are premeditated by issues related to land, economic imbalance, bad governance and illiteracy which are all issues related to lack of an economic sustainability. Over the last decade, the UN Commission on Human Security has identified global poverty as one of the major challenges to the international community (Barash, 2002, P. 492- 500).
The affinity of people in these impoverished regions creates sense of vulnerability and susceptibility to violence and makes them easy targets for diseases. Of course people who are living in dire living conditions could be easy targets for terrorists’ recruits. For UN, the prevalent of many failed states which are unable to provide adequate security and economic opportunities for their citizens requires the United Nations and other affluent nations to provide people in these areas with minimum acceptable living conditions e.g. basics food supplies, health cares, education and other living conditions which fosters security and economic sustainability capable to bring millions of people out of poverty. The challenges are multifaceted, poverty breeds instability and instability breeds conflict and conflict causes death, mass migration of people, war related diseases. The point is that for UN to create stability and peace, there have to be greater efforts by it member states to initiate ambitious sustainable goals aim at eliminating or reducing the level of global poverty in the developing world. To the UN credit, there have been greater attempts to combat poverty world wide, the problem is that there are millions of people that are living in poverty and the efforts of the UN and other international organizations are overwhelmed by the number of impoverished people living in worst living conditions in the world (Puchala, 2007, p. 44-50).
.
D) Terrorism
The increase in the number of terrorist’s groups world wide and terrorist attack on September 11th 2001 has made terrorism a global challenge that the UN and its member states have to confront. Since September 11th 2001, a lot of efforts have been made to deter terrorists from orchestrating such attack both by the United States government as well as by other nations. However, sovereign states as well as the United Nations have to do more to combat terrorism. There are no doubts; efforts have been made to prevent catastrophic terrorist attack. What is remaining as a bigger challenge for UN and its member states is to identifying and eradicating the core root causes of terrorism. As mentioned earlier, a lot of people in the world have nothing and those who have nothing to loose would risk anything including life to earn living. To deny terrorists access to these vulnerable populations, UN and member states have an obligation to provide conditions that can improve their living conditions e.g. fair trade, Foreign Direct Investment in poorest regions of the world, Debt Relief as well as increasing Aid Flows to poorest nations of the world. Of course these are ambitious and expensive goals and must require unwavering commitments from UN and its wealthy member states.
Moreover, peace as a condition for development holds key to curb the frequency and intensity of terrorism. In Africa and Middle East for example, unsecured borders encourage drug trafficking networks which provide terrorists with money to fund their operations. There is no doubt, as long as certain regions or countries remain hot spots, they will remain fertile breeding grounds for terrorism. As a way to counter this prospect, UN and other concerned member states have to develop policies that support political institutions that would sustain and consolidate peace.
E) Peacekeeping operations
The efforts of UN peacekeeping operations in the last forty years were simple. They were based on supervising cease fire between the belligerents. However, since the demise of the Cold War, UN peacekeeping operations have changed. They are no longer confined to traditional peacekeeping of interposition peacekeepers between the two sides. It now expanded to involve critical humanitarian relief operations around the globe. In most cases, peacekeepers are called to intervene for humanitarian reasons in the midst of civil war as it was the case in 1990s in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda and currently province of Darfur in Western Sudan. As conflicts in the world intensify, the demands for peacekeeping are becoming increasing. This means that UN has to increase soliciting more member states to contribute troops, logistical supports as well as funds to pay for these complex operations. The challenges for UN are so complex and difficult to anticipate. First, when a conflict breaks out, coming up with a proposal to create peacekeeping mission requires consensus at the Security Council. Sometimes political differences among the Big Five could delay UN to respond to a crisis in real time. And as a result, war can rage on for months before any meaningful intervention could be reached by the Security Council members to remedy the situation.
If this becomes the case, peacekeepers can start arriving at time when desire for peace has been overshadowed by the desire to fight and this end up putting the very peacekeepers in a hostile environment where their efforts can not rescue the situation either. The other challenge that UN faces is that, sometimes, UN peacekeepers could be ordered to intervene in situation where there is no peace to keep. In Somalia and Haiti for example, UNOSOM and UNMIH were ordered to intervene without cease fires declaration in both cases. In such instances, UN member states become reluctant to risk to put their troops and personnel in harm ways. Finally, as mentioned earlier, there are many peacekeeping operations going on over the world and UN resources are stretched to their limits. The question that the United Nations struggles with now is whether it would be capable to meet future peacekeeping operations with these limited resources given the reluctance of member states to contribute more resources to finance the peacekeeping operations (Puchala, 2007, p. 146-158).
.
F) Human Rights
The issue of human rights is not new, human history has been of violence and domination. A man over a woman, parent over children, race over race, nation over nation, and man over nature; and today, the world is no different. We are standing at a crossroad eyeing two different paths. One path leads man to equality, equal civil rights, prosperity, protection, rule of law (democratic path). The second path leads man to oppression, inequality, poverty, illiteracy, war and destruction, isolation, injustice and instability that lead to human sufferings (Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and Tyranny). Do all these sound familiar? Of course, this is the world man lives in. The first path represents democratic countries where basic human rights are protected, in these societies’ basic and stereotypical challenges have been overcome by establishing institutions that guarantee human freedoms whereas in the later path, the very institutions that are supposed to protect people freedoms are engineered in such a way that hinder and oppress people from enjoying their God’s given rights.
Well, when talking of human rights issues. People refer to the governments and institutions that hinder or oppress people especially in undemocratic part of the world. Of course, UN and democratic countries are very concern with the living conditions that fellow human beings are being exposed to by their governments. Although, the issue of Human Rights was not the prime concern of the framers of the UN Charter, there has been an evolution over the years to incorporate issues regarding human rights in the UN agenda. In the last 20 years, UN has been relentlessly involved in pursuing ultimate goal to secure human freedom around the world starting with 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and followed by 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child both which were crucial to vulnerable part of the population. Well, contemporary human rights issues are more than the ones mentioned above. They take forms of torture, enslavements, rapes, beating, and murder, hindering individuals to access to education, food, healthcare and worshipping.
Given attrocities in Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Burma, and recently worsening of situation in Tunisia, Egypt, and the current Gaddafi madness in Libya,UN needs to enhance human rights campaigns. United Nations needs not to wait to see another Rwandan to happen again. Whatever it takes to ensure mad men like Gaddafi are held accountable, people need to embrace it. The cause of those oppressed in Libya is our cause here in the west. It either we confront such attrocities before they materialize or else we will later be forced to regret and still have to intervene humanitarianly to prevent starvation and hunger.
Thus, the question becomes, how can we prevent madness of folks like Gaddafi and Bashir to cause human sufferings? How can the United Nations face it? First and foremost, it would have to encourage the spread of liberal democracy to undemocratic parts of the world where governments are believed to be involved in human rights violations. Secondly, global media is saturated by violent imageries. There has to be global efforts possibly through UNESCO to create initiatives that would teach people to be sensitive to pain and human rights. It has to be global efforts to pressure mass media to engage in non violent and human international relations. Things like educating regular people to recognize that human rights issues at interpersonal levels between a man and woman as for example. Finally, UN and its concern member states need to start enforcing serious sanctions on governments and regimes that practice human rights abuses. As of today, UN has not taken serious actions against governments that oppress their people. That needs to change, if UN believes in improving human rights issues across the globe (Puchala, 2007, p. 117-136).
References
Puchala, J.D., Laatikainen, K. V., & Coate, A. R. (2007). United Nations Politics. International Organization in a Divided World. (Ed). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall
Barash, P.D, & Webel, P. C. (2002). Peace Conflict Studies. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
United Nations General Assembly. (2002). United Nations Global Counter- Terrorism Strategy. Retrieved November 26, 2008 from United Nations Drugs and Crimes Website: http://www.unodc.org/pdf/terrorism/Index/60-288en.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment