The Tenth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened at Jakarta on September 1, 1992, with a call by the Indonesian President Suharto for establishment of a high-level working group to formulate proposals for restructuring of the United Nations.
He said, “We believe that the United Nations in this new era would remain the major instrument of global governance and the centerpiece of any new international order.
We must now more actively contribute to the revitalisation, restructuring and democratisation of its functions. For it is through the United Nations we can deal integrally with all aspects of international peace including, more urgently than before, its economic and social dimensions.”
Image Source: 185.26.182.219
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Despite the end of big powers’, (United States and Soviet Russia) confrontation, Indonesian President said, the world was still faced with many problems and “still far from being a peaceful and secure place.” There was need to ensure that the new world order did not turn out to be a “new version of the same old pattern of domination of the strong over the weak and the rich over the poor.”
Although the main theme of the speeches delivered at the plenary session of the Summit had been for reforming and restructuring the United Nations, but leaders of all the participating countries realised the near impossibility of achieving the desired objective as it called for a drastic revision of the Charter.
UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros- Ghali, who was present at the session, made it clear that changing the UN Charter was an almost impossible task. “If you want to change the composition of the UN Security
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Council, you have to deal with the version of the Charter and according to Article 109 there will be no such revision without the five permanent members.” He afterwards told newsmen that the only way possible for a revision of the Charter was by persuading the five permanent members that it was important to do so. “But this is not my job,” the Secretary-General remarked.
The 37th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, held in New Delhi in September 1991, called for the expansion of the Security Council by the inclusion of countries like India, Japan and Germany as permanent members to strengthen the authority of the world organisation and prevent it from being manipulated by any one State.
Speaking at the two-day inaugural session of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, in May 1993, the world leaders made a fervent plea for abolition of weapons of mass destruction and evolution of world order based on the principles of non-violence.
The leaders also called for a restructuring of the United Nations system. The former Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, affirmed that permanent members of the UN Security Council should not have the power to veto.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Canadian Nobel Laureate, Professor Douglas Rosch, favoured expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council with India and Japan from Asia, Brazil from Latin America and Nigeria from Africa as permanent members.
Commonwealth Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoky, said that adherence by nation-States to certain universally accepted norms and principles of conduct, and not disarmament alone, could ensure durable peace and the advancement of human civilisation. Central to such value system must be a belief in common humanity.
Eduardo Faleiro, the Indian Minister for External Affairs, inaugurating a seminar on India’s Foreign Policy at the Academy of Third World Studies of Jamia Millia University, Delhi, stressed the need for introducing functional and other reforms in the United Nations to make it a more effective instrument of international will and suggested the decision-making procedure of the Security Council and other important bodies of the United Nations should be made “more democratic and transparent.”
The practice of the permanent Security Council members “presenting their decisions to others for endorsement should be replaced by greater efforts to involve the developing countries in the decision-making process.”
The present composition of the Security Council “does not reflect either the vastly-expanded composition of the General Assembly or the current power configuration in the world.” He pleaded that proposals submitted by India, Brazil and other countries in this regard should be examined.
Writing on “New World Order by reshaping the U.N.”, Ingvar Carlsson, Julius Nyerere and Willy Brandt made a strong plea to the world leaders “to act now to build a new system for peace and security or the 1990s may become a decade of dangerous instability.”
The “new World Order, they affirmed, must be one founded on the vision of belonging to one global neighbourhood” and based on a sense of common responsibility, in which the notion of security is expanded to include economic and ecological, as well as military dimensions.
This “new order,” they believed, “will be far better suited to the interdependent realities of the next century than the old system of competitive and confrontational blocs.” In order to cope with exigencies of any kind and other turbulences, including the recurrent famine and civil war in Africa, the international institutions, it was suggested, must be strengthened.
With these challenges in mind, more than 25 political leaders of the world agreed to endorse the “Stockholm Initiative” as it had come to be known. They met at Geneva and outlined a programme of action aimed at strengthening the international security system in a spirit of cooperation and common responsibility.
It was, accordingly, proposed that the United Nations should be modernized, taking on a broadened mandate at the Security Council level which formed the hub of the entire problem.
With today’s power structure and the new global interdependencies, the composition of the Security Council and the use of veto by permanent members should necessarily be reviewed.
The present composition of the Council and veto right reflected the world balance of power at the end of World War II. Similarly, the method of appointing a Secretary-General must be reviewed.
The Secretary-General should be given a stronger position and the means to exercise authority. He should have the power to act swiftly when international crises call for it- if need be without prior consent of the Security Council.
The United Nations must also have improved capabilities for anticipating and preventing conflicts. The Secretary-General is already authorised to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security. But the system needs a better monitoring apparatus.
The Secretary-General should be the first to know when a conflict may develop, and then be able to be the first to take preventive action. To this end, permanent political officers in key regions, military observer teams, fact-finding missions and military collective security forces could constitute a global emergency system.
The emergency system would constitute a “trip-wire” for potential aggressors, “hopefully leading them to reconsider hostile action.”
A global law enforcement role for the United Nations should be elaborated focussing on the role of sanctions and military enforcement measures. There must be a clear understanding of the enforcement measures, their sequencing and timing that can be implemented by the international community when international law has been violated.
As military measures may sometimes become necessary, the potential of the Military Staff Committee of the Security Council should be reviewed. This Committee, practically dormant during the years of Cold War, could have a significantly more important role to play.
The role of the UN peace-keeping forces should also be expanded. They should not only deal with monitoring cease-fires and other means of ending or containing conflicts, but could be used to ensure that countries are not destabilised across frontiers.
The UN missions could be used to oversee elections, as was the case in Namibia, Nicaragua and Combodia. Military forces, of all nations could be earmarked for the peace-keeping tasks.
The chronic financial crisis of the United Nations has debilitated the organisation. Withholding contributions have been destructive way for some to exercise influence. In strict accordance with the UN Charter, those who choose not to adhere to the financial rules should be deprived of the right to vote.
Besides reorganising the structure of the United Nations, the international community should concentrate on limiting of arms in areas of political conflict. In the aftermath of Gulf War, there is a particular danger of new spiral of arms transfers.
Greater knowledge and open information would help limit arms trading that fuels conflict. The monitoring of world arms transfers should be strengthened, particularly by the United Nations, with the purpose of eventually agreeing on global norms for regulating such trade.
Proposals were also made for eradication of poverty, cooperative international development of the industrially backward nations, reduction of protectionism by nations, strategy for radically cutting debt overhang, control on global environments issues, etc., all measures aiming to meet the challenges developing countries are facing in the last decade of the outgoing century.
The reshaping of the United Nations is, therefore, deemed to be the harbinger of the New World Order and democratisation of the Security Council is the first and the foremost step in this direction.
The Security Council, as pointed out earlier, is at present dominated by the five permanent members who belonged to the allied countries of World War II and who had arrogated to themselves the power to veto; the United States clearly leading the rest.
With greater democratisation of the Security Council the United States would still remain a preponderant power, able to manipulate, but its margin for manoeuvre is sure to be substantially narrowed benefiting not only international security, but optimising United States power itself.
J.N. Dixit, Foreign Secretary in the Government of India’s External Affairs Ministry, in the Krishna Menon lecture delivered in New Delhi in May, 1992, called for greater democratization of the UN organisation and recommended that the developing countries should articulate their interests even at the risk of clashing with the interests of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
Indeed it may be asked what right the Security Council has to demarcate the international border between Iraq and Kuwait, especially when it was a contentious issue.
The Council had every right and duty to repel Iraq’s aggression, which it did. “But it is time now to question whether the UN is not exceeding its authority by lending its prestige to an operation designed unmistakably to oust Saddam Hussain from power by prolonging sanctions against Iraq.”
Syrian Vice-President Abdul Hamlim Khaddam said, during his talks with the visiting India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, in Damascus on August 22, 1992, that the Security Council was not properly represented as Asia having half of the mankind had only one permanent member out of five.
It was a long outstanding demand and it was, accordingly, necessary that the UN Charter was amended increasing the number of permanent members. Germany and Japan should be there. There should be an African member, probably Egypt or Nigeria, and a Latin American one, perhaps Brazil.
This would enhance the dignity and perceived legitimacy of the Council. It would also somewhat diminish the inevitable predominance within it of the United States. All these countries, he said, would have no veto power.
There is an overwhelming support amongst the member-States of the United Nations for expanding the Security Council and making it more representative of the world. But the process of change, says Bhaskar Menon, “is likely to be slow and the prospect that developing countries, such as India, will benefit seems uncertain.
This is evident from an analysis of responses to date from governments in a Note Verbale circulated by the Secretary-General.” asking all the 183 (now 185) members to express their ideas by June 30, 1993. The matter was scheduled to be discussed at the forthcoming General Assembly in September 1993.
In a step towards enlarging the Security Council, the General Assembly, on December 4, 1993, set up a working group to consider how this should be done.
The working group was to be “open-ended,” meaning all United Nations member-States would be eligible to participate in its deliberations and decision-making and the first meeting of the group was scheduled to be held in late January 1994.
It was to be chaired by the Assembly President, Ambassador Samuel Insanally of Guyana, who said sub-groups, might be appointed to study specific issues.
An informal paper along with the views of nearly 100 members of the United Nations was circulated among the members of the Assembly, which then consisted of 184 members, on January 21, 1994.
The working group was required to send an interim report to the General Assembly’s regular session starting in September 1994. The work involved was so complex with many interest groups to be satisfied that none could predict when the working group’s final report would be made.
The informal working paper virtually favoured an increase in the membership of the Security Council, but views on the criteria for revising the Council’s composition varied widely. Most States favoured the number to be between 15 and 25, although some favoured 31.
Many States stipulated, however, that an increase in the membership should not diminish the Council’s efficiency Most States wanted to retain the existing categories of permanent and non-permanent members, although the new categories of membership were also suggested.
Some States envisaged an increase of at least one, and as much as seven in the number of permanent members. However, others felt that there should be no additional permanent seats at all.
There is no definiteness among the permanent members also. The United States is the most forthright among them saying definitely that Germany and Japan should be made permanent members. It is also prepared to consider how the Council might be expanded to include a modest number of additional members.
France and China acknowledge the need for expansion of the Council, but are not specific to their preferences. The United Kingdom and Russia are the only two States that do not acknowledge the need for change.
Both have their opposition on what they see as the current effectiveness of the Security Council. United Kingdom affirms that the Security Council has been working with an unprecedented degree of consensus responding to challenges in Kuwait, Namibia,
Somalia, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and many other parts of the world. States are increasingly turning to the Security Council which remains able to respond rapidly and effectively. France favours enlargement, but suggests that the smaller the Security Council, the better the chances of reaching agreement on divisive issues.
There is, however, almost universal expectation among States who strongly support expansion that any new permanent members included into the Security Council would not have the veto. The views of the “Big Five” are crucial as for any change in the number of members of the Council requires amendment of the UN Charter and even a single veto can torpedo attempts to restructure the Security Council.
Expansion did come finally in September 1996 resulting into the inclusion of Germany and Japan. But both are non-permanent members.
India was not included and it caused a great disappointment in the country and other countries sympathetic to the claim of India and its contribution to the advancement of the Security Council and its other agencies.