Powerful, but paralysed? The case of UN action

The United Nations has recently come in for harsh treatment from analysts and even from member states of the UN. Having served as Permanent Representative to the UN during India’s stint in the UN Security Council (UNSC) in 2021-22, it was evident to me that the UNSC agenda was like ‘Hotel California’: Once you get onto the agenda, you can never leave! 

The P-5 (Permanent Five) have been guilty of playing out their inter se political rivalries inside the UNSC, thereby paralysing the Council in the face of urgent and critical challenges to international peace and security. Is this paralysis a good thing or a bad thing? Logic dictates that action of any kind is usually better than inaction. However, for the first time, the West is meeting some serious challenges to a Western worldview being imposed on geopolitical issues of the Global South. 

That, in itself, is not a bad thing. This P-5 standoff has given space for the countries in conflict, especially developing countries in Africa and Asia, to push the P-5 to not treat their issues unidimensionally through a colonial or Western lens, but respect their sovereignty and points of view. However, when P-5 causes such geopolitical paralysis inside the Council, it clearly affects its decision-making ability and credibility. This is where the UNSC stands.

The latest manifestation of UNSC paralysis has been on October 7, the day of the Hamas terror attack on Israel. The UNSC has done everything, except the most crucial, which is to call for a ceasefire to stop the killing of Palestinians.

It is unconscionable that more than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, out of which close to 9,000 are children, and UNSC has not called for a ceasefire yet. 

The UN General Assembly (UNGA), however, voted for a ceasefire, with 153 out of 193 member states supporting it — more than what a similar resolution on the Ukraine conflict got — but the UNSC has refused to follow through with it. It has just remained a statement of good intention.

Even as we pillory the UN, let us first acknowledge its contribution towards breaking the impasse on the Israel-Palestine issue over the decades. Israel got its statehood with UNGA resolution 181 of 1947 deciding to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime. 

In 1967, UNSC adopted resolutions 232 and 338, which are seen as giving a legal basis for a two-State solution on the basis of the principle of “Land for Peace” where Israel withdraws from occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in return for peace, which includes security, recognition, normalcy and peace for the peoples of the two States of Israel and Palestine. 

The treating of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem as ‘illegal’ flows from UNSC resolution 2334 of 2016, with even the US allowing it to be passed. Most of these legal parameters have been decided in the UN earlier. And as we look beyond the current war in Gaza, we find that these are precisely the parameters which the US and other major players are relying on now to kickstart the process, however improbable it may seem at this point.

But the loss of credibility of the UN on this issue can be attributed to the double-speak and inaction of the very powers, both P-5 and the Arab world, which are now calling for meetings after meetings of the UNSC on the Gaza war, either to pass resolutions or to veto them. In the last few years, UNSC countries used the Council’s profile to make all the ‘right’ noises on the Palestinian cause, so that the world is assuaged. 

On the other hand, the major players, especially the US and the big Gulf players, went out and did the opposite. They sidelined the Palestinian issue and sought to normalise relations between Israel and the Gulf/Arab world at the cost of the Palestinians, disregarding the parameters the UN has laid down. This was consciously done to make the UN a non-player on this issue. Now we see for ourselves where this has led us. 

The UN Secretary General and other UN organs have called a spade a spade with regard to what is happening inside Gaza and have pointed out potential violations of international law. The lesson to be drawn is that, at least in the Israel-Palestine issue, the more one strengthens the UN, the more we can get closer to a solution. 

The Ukraine conflict

However, the Ukraine conflict saw a P-5 country going to war. Much as we witnessed Russia veto every resolution against them in the UNSC, the reactions of member states in the UN presents an interesting study. While the P-5 was clearly split on the Ukraine conflict, the abstention of many developing countries on the UN votes conveyed a very
different message. 

In fact, the Global South used UNSC and UNGA as platforms to send a message to P-5 and the West that while they are on the side of UN Charter and of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the fight in Europe has to be resolved politically and not militarily. Secondly, that the war is being recklessly fuelled by all sides and that the unilateral sanctions imposed on Russia are only hurting the Global South inter alia food, energy, finance and humanitarian assistance. Hence, the UN has indeed helped developing countries to send a strong geopolitical message, even if the UN stands paralysed. It is another thing that the West is in no mood to listen to the Global South on the subject
of Ukraine.

Many other conflicts languish on the UNSC agenda for decades. There is much moral indignation generated on these issues, but in the end, realpolitik prevails since finally, P-5 member states either come to a deal amongst themselves or veto it. It is to break up this cozy club and push P-5 to take a more informed and responsible decision on developing country-related issues by reflecting the views of Global South, that countries like India have called for comprehensive UNSC reforms. 

When the UN was established in 1945, there were 51 member states. Now we have 193. India is already the most populous country and the fifth-largest economy in the world. Robust reforms are the need of the hour to make UNSC more representative, and thereby credible, and reflective of the reality outside the UNSC cloistered chambers. This was the spirit in which India brought the African Union into the G-20 during its Presidency last year. Can India do a Global South on
the UNSC?

(T S Tirumurti was Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations in New York between 2020-2022 and President of the UN Security Council for August 2021. Views are personal.)