What’s wrong with the United Nations?
March 2024, Simon Cole
A year in United Nations Australia Association
I have long admired the United Nation’s primary purpose and the reason for its founding — to prevent another world war. 25 years ago I visited the UN headquarters in New York and bought a souvenir wristwatch I still have today. I was inspired by the lofty goals of resolving geopolitical conflicts through negotiation and compromise.
The year before last, I finally got around to joining the U.N.A.A. Queensland branch as an academic member.
Last year I became increasingly alarmed at the polarization of views in Australia and the growing prospect of international conflict on a major scale. As we all know, military budgets around the world are going up. The parallels to the prelude to WW2 are uncanny.
My first meeting as a member was the 2022 AGM. I’m a keen sustainability advocate in Brisbane and at the previous year’s AGM, when the position of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Vice President was vacated, I offered to fill the position. That was overlooked and in hindsight, it’s just as well, as I will explain.
I spent the year attending UNAAQ branch committee meetings, listening and learning.
My varied interests has me involved in a number of disparate community groups and movements, such as running the local history group, a short time in the My Place network and a long time in Sustainable Population Australia. I am solutions-driven and am not bound by ideology.
In the 78 years since the founding of the UN it has failed to evolve with the times, as John Major recently stated (23:00). The Secretary General has released some modest proposals to improve the Security Council, but it’s too little, too late.
Ordinary Australians are under siege from multiple, complex social, technological and political issues. Globalization and privatization has reduced the resources they have to deal with them. The middle class, Westminster system and parliamentary democracy have been overwhelmed and undermined. There is a growing realization that the system is against them. One trend is the belief that the United Nations is an arm of the elites, hell bent on controlling their lives. The UN’s auxillary missions that go beyond it’s primary purpose add fuel to this perception.
I have spent some time among those disillusioned people because they are looking at practical ways to live independently of a system that they rightly see as a pump to the rich and powerful. Many of their choices are environmentally friendly, which is where our interests intersect, despite some of them being climate change skeptics. Although I disagree with some of their assessments, they are good, ordinary Australians trying to make sense of a complex situation.
Folk in the UNAAQ are good, ordinary Australians, too, who do not seem to feel undermined by the system. I suspect those reasons are socio-economic, as they tend to be metropolitan residents. It seems to me that we now live in a time when the spirit of the UN’s underlying premise of listening and negotiating is more apt than ever. Australia’s own Doc Evatt was front and centre at the founding of the U.N. in 1945. We signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights way back in 1948. Few Aussies are aware of the SDGs. Popular support for these charters have not been tested since 1948. If they no longer have it, they become an intrusion on domestic policy. All the signs are there that support is eroding. This may horrify their advocates, most of whom hold their progressive credentials dear to their heart, but it need not horrify them.
The UN is currently in over-reach, whilst failing in it primary purpose. What volunteer advocates in UNAAQ can do is focus on Peace and Security and in particular, Security Council reform. Some may argue that the SDGs and HR, etc., serve to enhance Peace and Security from the ground up. This may be true, but it is not the UN’s place to be doing that. Those inclinations must be home-grown. I am not calling for all UN auxillary departments to be abolished. UNESCO and the UN’s population tracking functions are services that few countries have any objection to, except the most extreme (such as the Taliban who blew up that ancient Buddhist monument years ago).
This is what I have learnt in my year with the UNAAQ. I have tried to share this, but have found no real opportunity to do so amidst the earnest pursuit of progressive business in the branch.
It was with gratitude, therefore, that on September 23 rd2023, I saw our Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, at the United Nations General Assembly calling for Security Council reform. What prompted the call was Russia’s veto power over the war with Ukraine.
“Senator Wong also wants to see more representation on the security council from Africa, Latin America and Asia, with Japan and India given permanent seats.” She also called for ‘restraints’ on Russia’s veto powers.
This could take the form John Major has described, by increasing the number of vetos required.
This is not the first time Security Council reform has been in the news lately. I was also recently gratified to learn that the Non-Aligned Movement is still going strong and is strongly insisting on U.N. Reform.
This, I believe, is where Australia belongs.
Originally published at http://equanimity.blog on March 13, 2024.
