Review veto system to end monopoly

The continued use of veto powers by a single privileged permanent member to sink or water down some of the critical resolutions, initiated to promote peace and security, moreover at the expense of the rest of the majority UN members, renders the organization ineffective if not irrelevant in the face of heightened violent conflicts between nuclear armed nations doubling as global economic power houses and natural resource rich developing counterparts. With such unrepresentative outcomes, one poses a question why should the veto power frustrate the will of majority members?

Another question which UN Secretary General must answer is; what happened to the goal of collective security whereby aggression against one is met by resistance all as chapter VII of the Charter demands?  Is Ukraine being bombed by Russia not member of UN?

While under UN charter, members can only use military force in self-defense or when such authorization has been obtained from the Security Council, Russia like USA and its allies in the invasion of Iraq and Libya and Syria, is acting contrary to any of the said conditions but hiding under the cover of Veto system. Surprisingly, even after invasions, citizens of these nations have demanded the departure of the invaders without success.

Felt restricted and frustrated by UNSC procedural veto system, some of the P5 introduced Responsibility to Protect (R2P), adopted in 2005 by UN World Summit in a bid to ensure that international community never again fails to halt mass atrocity crimes but unfortunately the initiators of this concept have ended up committing similar atrocities wherever they intervened only that they are not accountable to international Criminal Court at Hague.

Although R2P received green light of UN General Assembly, former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, in 2008, opposed it, saying that “the responsibility to protect does not alter, but indeed reinforces the legal obligations of member states to refrain from use of force except in conformity with the charter.”

Such indifference exhibited by P5 critically points to the covert agenda embedded in the establishment of UN originally by the first big three which later admitted two others.  All said and done its game of interests of majority inferiors up against the interests of superior minorities.

Furthermore, while UNSC hardly reaches consensus on issues affecting any of its permanent member, it’s worth noting that similar authority is always quick to have one on issues affecting nonmembers and poor nations with exception decisions on Rwandan and Bosnian conflicts which resulted into genocides.

This partly explains why developing nations bogged down by imperial funded violent conflicts are full of UN peace keeping troops apparently accused of  all sorts of crimes like rape, looting of minerals, killing of innocent unarmed civilians, sexual  exploitations – all of which they are deployed to guard against.

In support of several high ranking UN officials like Zeid Ra’ ad al Hussein (2014 – 2018) and Volkan Boz Kir (UN General President 2000) who have called for immediate reforms, a 2000 self-evaluation study commissioned by Kofi Anan, and led by veteran envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, concluded that “UN had repeatedly failed and would continue to do so in the absence of the necessary reforms.  Even the known top contenders lobbying to join five permanent members of UNSC such as Brazil, India, Japan, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa have all in the past vehemently opposed the use of force without authorization of UNSC thus giving hope that once admitted , the business won’t be as usual.

Unless UNSC membership is restructured to reflect a geographical global face and acquire more capacity and capabilities to respond to modern and multifaceted wars within their borders and outside, UN is destined to collapse like many have projected…

Mr Andrew Bakoraho is an advocate for equitable and progressive policies.