UN wins Vote of Confidence

THE UN summit of world leaders which opens today in New York invites global attention on two principal counts, besides being the largest gathering so far of such leaders. First, it opens at a time when multifarious, unprecedented challenges are gripping the world. Second, the summit coincides with an increasing tendency among some sections to question the UN's effectiveness in the face of these challenges.

When it was launched at the closing stages of World War II decades ago, the UN was conceived, among other things, as an answer to the yearning in the hearts of the peoples of the world for peace and for an institutional mechanism which would facilitate this cherished aim. The UN was also conceived as an instrument which would help in ushering equitable development in all parts of the world and serve as a forum for the meeting of the world's minds.

In assessing the UN's effectiveness in meeting these prime aims it is possible to veer towards a cynical standpoint; count the UN's failures only and declare the international body as failing to measure-up to the world's expectations.

However, one could also adopt the premise that the performance of the UN should be evaluated in relative terms and assess its effectiveness on the basis of the number of conflict situations it has helped defuse and the numerous occasions on which it has played a principal role in containing conflicts and effecting reconciliation among potential and real adversaries. If international relations are to be analyzed from a realistic standpoint, it is this second yardstick which should be adopted to assess the effectiveness of the UN.

In other words, the world could have been a far worse place to live in if not for the UN. Over the decades, it has not only endured bravely but grappled courageously with a plethora of problems, which, if unattended by the UN would have even brought the world perilously close to another world war. Even on the development front, mankind's lot would have been far more abject, if not for UN intervention through its vast array of specialised bodies.

However, there is no denying that the contemporary world is presenting the UN with a number of unprecedented challenges, which call for patient and insightful unravelling. For instance, the last two decades or more have seen the outbreak of a rash of ethnic and genocidal wars which defy easy resolution. Terror is proving a formidable challenge with the spectre of nuclear-armed terror groups now ominously crowding the horizon.

Fragmentation of states rather than their unification on ethnic and religious lines, is steadily defying the conventional conceptual tools of analysis and is calling for the adoption of entirely new frameworks of thought and analysis for their resolution and containment.

The world's problems are compounded by the fact that nuclear power -despite the horrors associated with it - is being favoured by states which find the current global order unacceptable.

Negative tendencies are also evident on the development front. The signs are that the UN's Millennium Development Goals would prove increasingly elusive on account of a lack of determination on the part of the world community to mark vigorously towards them. We are also yet to see a concerted effort by the developed countries by meet fully their overseas development aid commitments.

These are a mere crop of the problems confronting the world community for the resolution of which UN intervention is essential. Going by the pace of resolving these issues, the UN could seem to be falling below the required performance standards but the vast number of world leaders gathering at the UN today is proof that the latter is continuing to win a Vote of Confidence from the peoples of the world.

True, the problems confronting us are daunting in their dimensions but the UN is continuing to command the respect of the world community.

As long as this is the case, the UN would not be seen as superfluous. The peoples of the world should now resolve to steadily strengthen the time-tested UN system.