We are currently witnessing an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine for the last 7 months and amid this destruction you might question why the world is helpless in stopping either of them.
To remind you, on 24th of October, 1945, just after WWII, an organization was formed by 51 countries who swore and committed themselves for maintaining international peace and security and developing friendly relations with other states. Well, there were too many other objectives and promises but peace and security was the ultimate aim in the formation of the United Nations Organization. Today, it has 193 countries associated with its aim working together for achieving the objective. We have been reading and learning about all the different sub – bodies of the UN, which work for the betterment of this world like UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, etc and we see a considerable change with all the efforts made by the UN for this world. There are countless countries that are dependent on the NGO’s and countless people who are seeing the next morning without an empty stomach because of the UN. There are children who are being served by UNICEF and there are crises being tackled by UN bodies. But once we focus on the mission and purpose of the UN, its effect seems negligible.
In the recent Russia – Ukraine war, Russia had already declared four territories of Ukraine namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia a part of its federation which is totally against the Charter of UN which states that “Any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the Charter & International Law.” This statement was recently quoted by Antonio Guterres, the current UN Secretary through twitter wherein he brings upon this matter condemning Russia’s annexation plan. But due to its own ill rule of VETO, the United Nations failed to pass the proposal for any action against Russia’s annexation as Russia used the veto to discard the proposal.
Veto is a power provided to 5 permanent UN members namely US, Russian Federation, France, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and China, where even one of them could disagree to any proposal or any action and it shall never pass or be considered. The unethical use of veto is not something new we have been witnessing, this has a long cruel history which certainly forces the makers of UN to visualise in what worst nightmare they implemented this power. You might be thinking the recent war is the only case where the UN failed in its ultimate objective, but wait, there have been numerous accounts of such events which took place under UN’s negligence and depleted the world’s order.
The ongoing China – Taiwan conflict which arose a problem wherein China is suppressing Taiwan to become its part forcibly. The ongoing conflict of Armenia Azerbaijan for water and land has been continuing where the UN is not even intervening its head to solve the territorial dispute. There are too many strong examples even from the past like the Israeli occupation from 1948 till now, Cambodia violence of 1975, the never-ending Somalia Civil war started in 1991, Iran invasion by US from 2003 to 2011, ongoing Syrian civil war which started in 2011 are all examples of how terribly the peace and security objective of UN failed. It has been 77 years since WWII, and we see the same superpowers ruling every segment possible and there are comparatively less development on part of countries which required the most. Regardless of the efforts of the UN to change the fate of Africa, it’s the middle inch same. Why? Just because the rich and powerful have all the powers of security and peace and even the economy.
They seem to be the ones who are indirectly behind the disorder of the world every now and then. In every world disruption, we see there’s a superpower involved who stretches the matter rather than finding a stable solution. The 193 member organization of the UN seems like a puppet of just five permanent members which hardly solves any issue concerned with comparatively weaker nations.
The weak has always been slayed and the powerful always prevails, even in this era of so called International security, the weak will always be demolished from existence by the one’s holding the throne. We don’t know when the world or so called powerful countries will realise the need to amend some important rules of the UN so as to facilitate an effective way for security and peace of the world. We don’t know when the superpowers realise the need to address and make practical laws to avoid annexation of any weaker countries. We don’t even know what will be faced more after COVID and Russia – Ukraine dispute. If not soon, the world will lose its remaining hope on the UN and it will be read in the future books as the biggest failures in the history of mankind, even if the world rescues itself from the current brewing war.