UNSC Needs to be Reformed
By Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema

THERE exists a widespread impression that the UN is doing a poor job and therefore it must be reformed. The UN is known for supporting a massive bureaucracy, which is often clocked in secrecy. Its employees who are often deemed to be over 60,000 are hardly ever subjected to public scrutiny.

Reforming the Security Council appears to be central to the reforming of the UN. It needs to be stressed here that successive waves of reforms have washed over the UN, each promising greater efficiency, effectiveness and coherence but none of these steps have come close to altering the basic nature and the purposes of the organisation. Perhaps that is why it was aptly put by a writer that the UN appears to be always changing, always reforming but never reformed.

The record of UN achievements is somewhat mixed. In some areas it has done well such as UN peacekeeping operations or the work of specialized agencies while in other areas such as conflict resolution, its performance has been less than satisfactory.

The role of Security Council in resolving disputes and maintaining international security is not at all impressive. The lingering dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir or the Palestine question and host of other security related situations tend to generate a poor image of the UN. The main culprit for poor performance in this area has indeed been the Security Council.
It is not too far fetched to assume that United Nations still continues to enjoy the reputation of being the premier international organization despite the fact that developments in the recent past appears to have made UN rather a weakened organization and almost each of its192 members favoured reforms.

The former Secretary General’s efforts to have the UN reformed in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century have also not been very successful though a group of eminent people did make recommendations which have so far not been fully adopted.

The current cost of the entire UN system is around US$20 billions which are not all that much if compared with the aspirations of countries and considering the vast areas that it is supposed to cover. It is less than what a major firm in rich countries would pay bonus to its employees.
It is expected to cover almost everything ranging from security issues to preservation of archaeological sites. The agenda list is enormously long but resources provided are indeed limited. To cater for all areas, it is imperative that the rich countries should increase their contributions to UN in order to facilitate its work.

The irony of the situation revolves around the use of UN by major countries for their own ends while they frequently default in making their contributions. Larger contributions do not morally justify the excessive use of the organization to attain their narrow selfish interests at the cost of organizations reputation.

It was generally understood that rich countries would contribute more and the developing countries would pay less but the organization would pay equal attentions to the needs of all member nations. Since it started functioning in Jan.1946, the UN has changed in many ways under the influence of changing world conditions.

The most pronounced and profound changes seemed to have taken place in the area of maintaining international peace and security.

Undoubtedly the grounds for establishing an international organization had already been laid down by the advent of League of Nations. The negotiations for UN Charter had started during the Second World War. The Charter that was produced after meticulous negotiations at the San Francisco conference on June 26, 1945 was not a perfect document.

While some regarded it as a flawed document with many holes, other viewed it as a political document that gave legal expression to the realities of 1945 and enabled a universal body to take off.

The most important aspect of the Charter was the provision dealing with the effective collective measures in order to maintain international peace and security. To maintain international peace and security, the framers decided to establish a powerful body called the UN Security council. It was expected to play an effective role in mobilizing the world community to repel aggression, manage conflict, and maintain peace.

Whether or not the Security Council has been able to perform the assigned function adequately has become a subject of debate among many quarters. There are those who argue that the very composition of the Security Council hampers its effectiveness while others stress that the single most effective impediment in the smooth functioning of the Security Council is the veto power that is exclusively enjoyed by the five permanent members of the Council.

Another argument often advanced is that the very structure of the Security Council does not reflect the realities of the post Cold war international order. While there seems to be a consensus over the need to reform the Security Council, divergent opinions are continuously expressed over the nature, scope and functions of the organization.

The permanent members of the UNSC were given veto powers with a view to avoid injustice and to make the organization more potent and effective. Following the end of the Second World War the world was bipolarized into the communist and the capitalist camps. Instead of employing veto in order to avoid injustice the permanent powers began to use the veto powers to block the resolutions that were likely to adversely affect their own interests as well as of their partners.

The repeated use of veto by both the Soviet Union and the United States in order to protect the interests of their partners made it quite clear that only under exceptional circumstances would the concurrence of the great powers would occur.

Thus the Security Council was unable to take effective measures to deal with threats to peace and acts of aggression. However this does not mean that the Security Council was unable to attain any degree of success. On the contrary the Council was able to act with limited degree of success in dealing with disputes of lesser importance.

As mentioned above the major failure of the UN is directly linked with the composition and functioning of the UN Security Council. Not only the five great powers enjoy the veto powers but their policy pursuits have been more in line with their own interests rather than contributing towards the international peace and security impartially.

The past is riddled with examples when the Security Council was unable to pass the resolution and the dispute continued to linger on. Therefore there exists a dire need for radically reforming the Security Council if the UN is intended to cope effectively with the challenges of the 21st century.

Indeed the voices to reform the United Nations (UN) are continuously increasing. One major reason for rare reforms is its complex amendment system. The framers of the UN Charter made the amendment procedure so complex that only three amendments were approved in more than fifty years- two to expand Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and one to enlarge the Security Council. An amendment requires the support of two-third of the member states, including all the permanent members of the Security Council, and the subsequent ratification by their national constitutional processes.

Not only the global environment has radically changed in the post Cold War era but the post 9/11 period has further put strains on the effective working of the UN Security Council. Indeed time has come that the structure and functioning of the UN Security Council is radically altered in order to meet the challenges of the current century.●

© 2007 Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema