It is time to leave the United Nations. Just as the League of Nations did not perform as it should now it is obvious that the United Nations does not perform as it should. Therefore it is time to launch a new Organization which I am calling provisionally the Equal Nations Organization.

Why?

The UN General Assembly can only pass ‘non binding resolutions’.

For instance the latest resolution passed was…

The nonbinding resolution, which was drafted by 22 Arab countries and calls for an immediate humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Friday by a vote of 120 to 14 with 45 abstentions.

All the power in the United Nations rests with the UN Security Council, where the victors of world war 2 still have their ‘veto powers’. This allows politics to always override Human Rights.

For instance….

UN Security Council Reform: What the World Thinks

STEWART PATRICK,  SITHEMBILE MBETE,  MATIAS SPEKTOR,  ZHANG GUIHONG,  ALEXANDRA NOVOSSELOFF,  CHRISTOPH HEUSGEN,  ROHAN MUKHERJEE,  PHILLIP Y. LIPSCY,  MIGUEL RUIZ CABAÑAS IZQUIERDO,  ADEKEYE ADEBAJO,  ANDREY KOLOSOVSKIY,  JOEL NG,  PRIYAL SINGH,  BARÇIN YINANÇ,  RICHARD GOWAN,  ANJALI DAYAL

• JUNE 28, 2023

Source: Getty

Summary:  To illuminate the shifting diplomatic landscape, fifteen scholars from around the world address whether the UN Security Council can be reformed, and what potential routes might help realize this goal.

CUTTING THE GORDIAN KNOT: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON UN SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

Stewart Patrick

The United Nations (UN) Security Council’s failure to act on Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has reignited long-smoldering global demands to overhaul the world’s premier body for international peace and security. U.S. President Joe Biden fanned these embers in his September 2022 speech to the UN General Assembly. After reiterating long-standing U.S. support for “increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives,” Biden added a new twist: the United States now endorses not only “permanent seats for those nations we’ve long supported”—that is, Japan, Germany, and India—but also “permanent seats for countries in Africa [and] Latin America and the Caribbean.” Biden’s surprise announcement kicked off the latest flurry of multilateral diplomacy on the perennial and seemingly intractable challenge of Security Council reform.

Few topics generate so much talk and so little action as Security Council reform. In December 1992, the General Assembly created an open-ended working group to review equitable representation on the council. More than three decades later, that (aptly named) body continues to meet—with no tangible results. In October 2008, the UN formally authorized intergovernmental negotiations on the “question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council.” After fifteen years of fruitless discussion, the diplomatic impasse persists in part because member states have never agreed to negotiate on the basis of a single rolling text.

The impulse for reform is understandable. Nearly eight decades after its creation, the Security Council retains the same five permanent members (P5)—China, France, Russia (following the dissolution of the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States. Since 1945, however, major players like India and Brazil have emerged, to say nothing of Japan and Germany, the long-rehabilitated aggressors of World War II. Even as the UN’s overall membership has nearly quadrupled (from fifty-one to 193 member states) thanks to decolonization and the dissolution of multiethnic states, the council’s composition has expanded only once, in 1965, when the addition of four elected seats grew the council from eleven to fifteen members.

Compounding these frustrations about membership, each of the P5 countries retains a veto permitting it to unilaterally block Security Council resolutions inimical to its national interests (as Russia has done with respect to Ukraine). The result is frequent council paralysis, exacerbated by deepening geopolitical rivalry between Western democracies and authoritarian China and Russia. To a growing proportion of the world’s governments and citizens, the council today is both feckless and unjust, dominated by irresponsible and unrepresentative powers inclined to abuse their position rather than safeguard the peace. Restoring the council’s effectiveness and legitimacy, critics contend, requires updating its anachronistic composition and unfair decisionmaking rules to better reflect ongoing shifts in global power and emerging centers of moral authority. Unfortunately, UN members are divided over the shape of any reform, not least whether it should focus on enhancing the council’s capability or its representativeness. Thanks to this diplomatic deadlock, the Security Council is trapped in amber.

Stewart Patrick

Stewart Patrick is senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.

@STEWARTMPATRICK

Although the council has suffered previous blows—among them the ill-fated U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without its authorization—Russia’s brazen aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 and ability to veto any council response have radicalized reform demands. “Where is this security that the Security Council needs to guarantee?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thundered in April 2022. With collective security paralyzed, another question hung in the air: is the UN destined, like the League of Nations, for the ash heap of history?

The obstacles to council reform are daunting. They include the high procedural hurdles to amending the UN Charter; divergent member state positions on the acceptable size and terms of any enlargement; disagreement over current veto provisions and their potential extension to any new permanent members; and gnawing uncertainties over whether any plausible enlargement—even if it made the council more representative—would improve its functioning. Any change to the council’s composition or voting rules would require the approval of two-thirds of UN members—including each of the P5—accompanied by relevant domestic legislation. Given intensifying geopolitical rivalry and deepening political polarization in many countries, prospects for updating the council appear slim.

Yet, pressure for Security Council expansion and veto reform will surely grow as the distribution of power and the nature of security threats shift ever further from what they were in 1945. Absent structural changes, the council’s performance and legitimacy will inevitably suffer. Given these stakes, the world requires fresh thinking on reform pathways that will help the council meet the moment.

To illuminate this shifting diplomatic landscape and explore potential routes forward, Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions Program invited fifteen scholars from around the world to contribute short essays responding to the following question: how should the UN Security Council be reformed, from the perspective of your country or region?

The program invited each author to assess the council’s current health and performance; to consider whether any changes to its composition and rules (notably the veto) might improve what ails it; to outline plausible diplomatic scenarios for achieving any recommended reforms; and to consider the potential consequences of a continued lack of reform. Authors were also asked to summarize, though not necessarily endorse, the official position of their country or regional bloc.

This compendium is the result. It includes separate essays from the perspective of each P5 nation; four long-standing aspirants to permanent seats (Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan); two leading African candidates for permanent membership (Nigeria and South Africa); two important regional powers (Mexico and Türkiye); a small but influential island nation (Singapore); and the continent of Africa. Collectively, these essays provide a timely snapshot of the diplomatic debate over Security Council reform at a moment when the body’s credibility, effectiveness, and legitimacy have receded to their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War.

KEY EMERGING THEMES

The health of the Security Council is poor but not yet terminal. Most contributors believe the council’s performance and legitimacy have declined, particularly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To be sure, its effective functioning has always been contingent on trust among the P5 and their willingness to withhold the veto. In the benign post–Cold War context of the 1990s, optimism ran high that the council might finally fulfill the aims of the UN Charter. Such optimism gradually faded. Tensions between the P5’s democratic and authoritarian members reasserted themselves, exacerbated by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the NATO-led intervention in Libya and its chaotic aftermath, the breakdown of UN diplomacy over the war in Syria, and the fallout from Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, among other disputes. Even so, the council managed to insulate much of its business from these frictions. It continued, for example, to reauthorize peace operations in many conflict areas. Such compartmentalization still occurs but has become more difficult since February 2022, threatening the council’s ability to serve as a clearinghouse for the P5 to compromise in a divided world. East-West tensions now intrude on its everyday deliberations, including the release of basic presidential and press statements. As the International Crisis Group warns, “worse may lie ahead.”

Three blocs continue to hold irreconcilable positions on reform. Virtually all UN members endorse council reform, but they disagree on whether its primary thrust should be to harness major power capabilities or increase equitable global representation. Three main blocs remain dug in. The first is the so-called G4 coalition, comprising the four main aspirants to permanent council membership—Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan—and their supporters. The G4 governments seek the same status as the existing P5, although they show some flexibility on the veto. They also advocate two permanent seats for Africa. The second bloc is the Uniting for Consensus (UFC) coalition, led by the G4’s regional rivals (including Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Poland, Pakistan, South Korea, and Türkiye, among others). As Miguel Ruiz Cabañas Izquierdo explains in his essay, the UFC advocates expanding the council’s elected membership from ten to twenty—a strategy that would allow more nations to serve on an egalitarian, globally representative council, rather than reinforcing great power hierarchy. The third major bloc is the African Union (AU). Its fifty-four members remain committed to the 2005 Ezulwini Consensus, which insists that the continent be granted two permanent seats, with full veto rights, as well as at least three additional nonpermanent seats.

The permanent members have stymied progress. Each of the P5 is determined to maintain its permanent seat and veto, but their positions on council reform vary. Russia, as Andrey Kolosovskiy notes, is skeptical about adding permanent seats or otherwise diluting its global status—an instinct reinforced by its relative decline and diplomatic isolation. China likewise opposes new permanent members, showing special animus to the aspirations of regional rivals India and Japan. Consistent with the UFC position, Beijing advocates up to ten additional elected members to increase equitable representation from all regions. More pointedly, as former German diplomat Christoph Heusgen observes, China has repeatedly used its diplomatic muscle to block text-based negotiations that might lead to an actual breakthrough. 

source and more …

In other words

In the United Nations the humanitarian organizations, such as WHO, World Food Program, UNHCR, IOM, etc. are doing a good job and should continue to do so.

The political side of the United Nations however is hopeless. Talks upon talks of reform lead no where. Consequently I urge all nations to LEAVE THE UNITED NATIONS and set up a new organization called the EQUAL NATIONS ORGANIZATION.

All humanitarian UN agencies should also switch to the new organization.

The only thing that needs to remain in the old UN system is my pension fund, so that I may continue to receive my small UN pension…

Rafiq A. Tschannen …