Peace & Security

What happened to the promise of the United Nations?

In lieu of the Ukraine-Russian Conflict, we are in a familiar position. Where was the United Nations on this? How did it fail to keep its promise of mitigating escalations and potential world war?

Below is a great recent video interview of Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. She speaks on the failures of the United Nations and how it needs a reform.

What is the UN Security Council? It is actually the most powerful international political body. It represents a hall for superpowers from WWII and other elected countries to make sure we don’t suffer the scourge of war. Unfortunately, it has continually failed.

Security is Not Peace!

The Veto Power of the Permanent Members of Security Council has hampered not only deescalating wars, but also UN Resolutions that will bring peace. Here is a comprehensive log of vetoes in the United Nations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vetoed_United_Nations_Security_Council_resolutions

Even further, the International Court of Justice cannot convict war criminals without the allowance of the Security Council. We have to remember that the United Nations is a colonial institution. There will always be a bias to Western & Asia Powers that were victorious in World War II.

As we can see in the history of the Vetoes, the great insecurity of the human society is imperialism, which was not stopped in UN Security Council. Instead, the imperial nations had power in the council.

Peace is the condition that we no longer concerned with “Security”.

We have to ask: What is the security for? Security of Power? Security from Imperialism? We can see that United Nations needs a reform in that the UN Security Council no longer has veto power. Instead, I suggest the ICJ has that power. Further, we need to decolonize and de-imperialize the United Nations. It has actually failed more than it has succeeded.

For Further breakdown, Watch this great video from Al Jazeera on United Nations Reform: