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| Friday, 23 January 2004 |
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Should the United Nations be restructured? by Dr. H. S. S. Nissanka
On appointment as the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan spoke of the need to give priority to restructuring the UN system. That was in 1997 and six years have passed but the UN as structured in 1945 remains almost the same except the increase in the membership in a few organs such as the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. We do not know what Mr. Annan meant by restructuring the UN. We do not know whether he was influenced by the concept of "Perestroika" advanced by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former or the last President of the USSR. "Restructuring", "Decentralization", "Transparency" and "Consolidation" are some of the concepts that have drawn the attention of politicians, statesmen and academics at national and international levels. These concepts provide the theoretical background geared to achieving efficiency and economy. Is the UN system devoid of efficiency and economy in utilization of resources? The general public opinion, as seen through the media, is that the UN system is heading for a crash. Enlarged membership To make the permanent membership broad - based in keeping with the principle of equitable geographical distribution, new members to the Security Council should be added. Five names of additional countries have already been talked about. They are Japan, Germany, India, Nigeria, or South Africa and Brazil. If these members are to be appointed as Permanent Members of the Security Council, will these newly appointed members relinquish the veto power? Such a move is meaningless unless and until the original Permanent Members decide to do so. The membership of the Economic and Social Council has been increased twice - from the original 18 to 27 and later to 54; similarly, the Security Council membership also has been increased from original 11 to 15. Therefore, it is time to increase its membership further in keeping with the principle of equitable geographical distribution of the membership in the Security Council too. The last increase took place on 17th December, 1963. Since then, 34 years have passed and the UN membership has gone up to 191. It is time to increase the membership of the Security Council - the permanent membership from 5 to 10 and non-permanent membership from 10 to 15. In all there will be 25 members of the Security Council. Such a restructured Security Council will be more in keeping with the envisaged political realities particularly of the 21st century. To increase the membership of the Security Council, Article 23 and Article 27 of the Chapter V of the Charter have to be rewritten. Further to accommodate more permanent members, Articles 108 and 109 also have to be changed or restructured. The General Assembly is the most important organ of the United Nations where all the members big or small can sit and air their views with a sense of being sovereign equals. But Article 12 narrows down this sovereignty of the members of the General Assembly as it prohibits the General Assembly to take up any matter of discussion when the matter is under consideration by the Security Council. General Assembly
The UN Charter is silent about a probable situation where the Security Council may be faced with a deadlock due to the use of veto right by any of the Permanent Members. Such a situation arose in 1950 when the Security Council was discussing the Korean war. As a way out, using Article 51, a device was discovered for the General Assembly to take military steps to contain the war. This new way out is called the "Uniting for Peace Resolution". Therefore, the Article 12 of the Charter has to be changed to accommodate the "Uniting for Peace Resolution" in it. This move would enhance the power of the General Assembly and curtail the use of veto right by the Permanent Members, particularly when there is a dangerous situation and the Security Council is faced with a deadlock. Article 20 of the Charter limits the meetings of the General Assembly to annual sessions and special sessions when required. The annual sessions are attended by the Heads of State and Government of the member countries, and for weeks, the General Assembly become a glorified "talking shop". There is no structured debating system at the annual sessions. The Assembly's regular sessions begin in the 2nd week of September and ends before Christmas and the sessions are limited to 13 weeks into which speeches by the most of the heads of the member states will be crammed. Since every member country should have a permanent representative assigned to the UN, there is no difficulty in having sessions spread over the whole year. The European Parliament meets every month except in August; The Indian and British Parliaments meet 10 months of the year. The General Assembly meets on less than 78 days per year, while the Canadian parliament meets on 180 days per year, the British on 160 days, the US House on 139, Indian Lok Sabha on 199 days. This indicates that the number of days on which the world body meets, is insufficient. Therefore Article 20 should be restructured to facilitate the General Assembly meetings on fixed days in 10 months of the year. The number of days per month has to be decided by the Secretary General, depending on the current workload. In national legislative bodies, question time keeps the members and relevant officials alert; but there is no question time at the General Assembly sessions. This is a conspicuous lacuna in the agenda of the General Assembly meetings. Article 21 empowers the General Assembly to adopt its own rules and procedures. Therefore simply by means of a resolution in the General Assembly, the item of question time could be introduced. This will bring a lot of qualitative changes in the administrative set up in the UN system. Financial crisis Article 17 of the charter empowers the General Assembly to collect annual membership feed as apportioned by the General Assembly. More than 71 per cent of the total membership fee is being paid by 6 members - USA 25 per cent, Japan 15.7 per cent, Germany 9.1 per cent, France 6.4 per cent, UK 5.3 per cent, Italy 5.2 per cent and Russia 4.3 percent. The rest - the 180 members have to pay only about 29 per cent of the total membership fees. As of February 1997, member States owed the UN a total of over $3 billion. The US debt to UN stands at over $ 1.6 billion including arrears and the due payments for the year 1997. This amounts to over half of the total debt owned by member states to the UN. From 1997 onward, as it has been reported the UN will have no funds or its running expenses. It has for many years been borrowing money for running expenses from funds controlled by it - funds such as the Peace Keeping Fund but these sources too are, drying up now. The UN lacks money to pay for all the programmes it has initiated all over the world. Therefore the United Nations Organisation is in a very precarious financial situation indeed. The style of running the UN organs and agencies is in keeping with American standards of living and doing things. We may call it the 5 star hotel style. The highest number of members of the top bureaucracy of the UN and its agencies are American citizens. For the year 1996 the UN had approved $468 million for procurements and of that amount, $229 million had gone to the American companies. The UN, diplomatic and Consular corps contributes $2.2 billion to the economy of the New York City area alone. This contribution to the New York City has generated 30,600 jobs for American citizens. The USA is the country that is being most benefitted in the locations of the United Nations in the city of New York. Therefore there is no moral - not even economic justification for the US to withhold its payments due to the UN. Administration Restructuring and pruning the UN administration had already begun by 1988. The number of top posts of the UN have been cut by 25% and the staff has been reduced from 12,000 to 9,000 in recent years. Had the UN Headquarters been located in a less expensive city like New Delhi or Bangkok, the running cost of the UN could have been very much less than what it is at present. There is a suggestion backed by a feasible study for the establishment of a United Nations Parliament, to exist side by side with the present United Nations complex. Such a venture is sure to add more and more financial burden to the UN system. It is time to find ways and means to bring the UN down to a manageable level while working with better efficiency and economy. If that cannot be done the UN system is likely to come down like a house of cards dashing mankind's hopes for peace and prosperity. A repeated argument very often heard is that the UN should be democratised. Here I wish to point out that there are two forms of democratic decision making (1) "Unanimityism" (2) "Majorityism". The principle of Unanimityism implies that for a decision, all must agree and give consent; Majorityism implies that when there is majority consent, a decision can be arrived at. The principle of Unanimityism was experimented with at the League of Nations (1920-1939) where for a decision, all the members - big or small - should give their consent. This amounted to nothing but giving a veto right to every member of the League of Nations which collapsed within 19 years of its birth. Therefore this form of democracy - the democracy of unanimity is not practicable at international organisations such as the United Nations. However the principle of unanimityism is written into the UN Charter. The unanimity of Permanent Members is maintained when it comes to taking decisions on non-procedural matters. This is enshrined in Article 27 Para 3 which has also instituted a check on the Permanent Members - Para 3 has laid down that a party to a dispute under consideration at the Security Council, should abstain from voting. Therefore a party to a dispute cannot exercise the veto right at the Security Council. But the USA has violated this principle on certain occasions. The other form of democratic decision making the majorityism is followed at all the proceedings of the other organs and agencies of the UN. The makers of the UN Charter had been mindful of geopolitical realities. The big powers have to be given due recognition. For instance the mighty USA will not like to be treated all the time in par with a small country like Vanautu or the Soloman Islands. In fact, at the General Assembly the USA and Vanautu State with a population of about 156,000 have equal weightage in voting. We should appreciate the big powers agreeing on equal terms with small countries like Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka in the General Assembly. We should not take hasty decisions attacking the veto right. As stated earlier, I wish to repeat and repeat the fact that there is no mechanism in the Charter to remove the veto right from the five permanent members unless all the five permanent members voluntarily give up the veto right given to them under Article 27 Para 3 of the Charter. (The writer is a fulbright scholar who holds MA and Ph.D Degrees in International Relations) |
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