OPINION:
According to the Geneva Academy of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, as of May, there were more than 120 armed conflicts in the world, involving 60 countries and 120 nonstate armed groups, the highest number since World War II. The last three years have been the most violent of the last three decades. One-quarter of the world’s people — 2 billion individuals — live in places affected by armed conflict.
The wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and Haiti, as well as other armed conflicts, are in the news every day, with the prospect for peace and reconciliation becoming more remote and unachievable.
The United Nations came into existence after 29 nations had ratified the charter, signed on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco. The charter is considered an international treaty and is binding on the 193 member states of the United Nations. Chapter 1, Article 2 of the charter reads: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its members.”
The 79th session of the U.N. General Assembly will meet on Sept. 10, and general debate is scheduled for Sept. 24 to 30. This will be preceded by a Summit of the Future on Sept. 22 and 23 that will focus on the three pillars of the United Nations: sustainable development, peace and security and human rights. Indeed, these are the issues the United Nations should focus on in this session, given the absence of peace and security for the 2 billion people affected by armed conflict.
There is understandable skepticism as to the value of the United Nations if the proliferation of wars and conflicts continues to escalate while annually, at the United Nations, heads of state parade in front of an international audience and speak eloquently about fixing a world in disarray. Their words ring hollow.
Hopefully, the United Nations’ focus this year on the Summit of the Future, and its deep dive into peace and security, will finally bring positive change to the United Nations, with the establishment of a U.N. entity for one purpose: helping to peacefully resolve some of the many armed conflicts killing, maiming and displacing millions of innocent people.
Article 23 of the U.N. Charter established the Security Council consisting of 15 members of the United Nations, five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and 10 nonpermanent members, five of which are elected each year by the General Assembly for a two-year term.
The Security Council, with its five permanent members — all nuclear weapons states — could be tasked with establishing this entity dedicated to negotiating for the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts affecting one-quarter of humanity. There should be no veto power option on the part of any of the five permanent member states as members of this negotiating team.
The irony, of course, is that Russia, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, blatantly violated the U.N. Charter that prohibited the use of force against Ukraine, an independent, sovereign nation. The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine recently said civilian suffering in Ukraine was mounting because of Russia’s disregard for basic principles of humanitarian law and its human rights obligation.
Thus, dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while trying to establish a U.N. entity dedicated to negotiating for the peaceful resolution of issues dealing with armed conflicts will have to be addressed.
How can the United Nations actively pursue peace and stability in a world convulsed with conflict and wars when one of its permanent members of the Security Council is an aggressor, in violation of the U.N. Charter? But dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should not absolve the United Nations from the needed, noble task of actively participating in efforts to peacefully resolve the proliferation of armed conflicts affecting so many nations, killing so many innocent people.
And if the United Nations is not capable of actively contributing to peace and stability in a world in disarray, convulsed with wars and conflicts, then it is failing to contribute to its principal mission — peace and security for all nations — and the annual platitudes we hear are worthless.
• Joseph R. DeTrani served as special envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006 and as director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.
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