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Upon the discovery of atrocities committed the length and breadth of the Axis powers, by Italy in Abyssinia, by Japan in China and in the Philippines, by Germany in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia …, and, ultimately, in Germany, the United Nations Declaration of 1942 was rekindled in name to form the United Nations Charter of December 1948.
It’s a sobering text when one considers the extent to which, today, its terms are obtempered and fulfilled by those who, so gleefully, over time, have signed it.
I am tending these days to eschew the abbreviation UN, which is all too easily dropped from the lips, and to much more favour the full name, until people come to a realisation of what the UN really is, and what the United Nations really are. Just as a nation is its people, a supranational organisation is its member nations. It is not a far-off megalith, distinct and discrete from its members: it is its members.
The United Nations’ Charter is lengthy, running to 111 articles. But its substance is set forth very concisely in its preamble.
The preamble to any document is a statement by the signatories of the very reasons for which they have even bothered to draw up the deed. The deed is their commitment, and the preamble is the state of mind that has impelled them to endorse and embrace the words that follow.
Here is the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations in a shortened form. The Charter is signed because:
the United Nations are determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. They are determined to prevent wars;
the United Nations are determined to reaffirm faith in human rights: the right not to suffer persecution for what we believe, think or are;
the United Nations are determined that the rights of men and women shall be equal. Not approximated or equated, but equal. Everywhere;
the United Nations are determined to uphold justice. Not to compromise and barter, but to do that which is just and right;
the United Nations are determined to promote social progress and greater freedom. This obliges the member states to stop and identify where freedom is constrained beyond necessity, and to set that right.
These are not my words as such (although I paraphrase, but check the base text and tell me if I diverge from the sense intended by the Charter). However, I will not relate here a litany of failure by the United Nations, nor an honours roll of successes, whether failure or success be a product of the United Nations’ own failings or the United Nations’ happenstance luck. For that is the past and here I write about the future.
Nevertheless—and this is indeed my own word—the preamble to the Charter sets out in clear terms what the United Nations consider to be fair. And, in so doing, they set out what they consider to be unfair. And they do that despite the fact that the words fair and unfair appear not once in the whole document.
Unfair are:
War.
Incursions on human rights. (Human wrongs, if you will.)
Inequality.
Injustice.
The United Nations’ organisation was founded in order to prevent war. Quite simply, it should, on the basis of legal rights, duties, principles and doctrines, arbitrate on the matter of territorial or ethnic claims between member states. It, and it alone, may do that. It is a designated arbitration tribunal.
The United Nations seek to uphold human rights. That means that any member that makes incursions on human rights must be held to account, for they will thereby have breached their solemn undertaking in terms of the Charter. Likewise in matters of inequality, and likewise in matters of injustice.
However, whilst war is a question of foreign policy (albeit there can be domestic implications too), and whilst human rights and inequality rest within the domain of legislative policy, justice is fundamentally a matter for the judiciary, and the judiciary should, in a country that seeks to uphold justice, be freed from the trammels of executive policy. Therefore, the United Nations have undertaken to assure their judiciaries of the freedom, power and prerogatives needed to judge impartially the causes that are raised before them. If a country’s judiciary manifestly fails in that, then it is the nation’s bounden duty to arrange matters so that that lacuna is filled. It has committed to doing so, in terms of the Charter.
So, where does that leave us?
Member nations that wage war, fail to respect human rights, maintain laws that perpetuate inequality, and fail to rein in the injustices meted out by their justices, are in breach of the Charter.
There are procedures and fora organised within the United Nations’ organisation to settle cross-border disputes, to promote aid and help to the downtrodden, and to uphold justice for those unable to uphold it for themselves. Those nations that fail to abide by the Charter—and one can in time argue whether that should apply on a strict basis or on an “extreme case” basis—have no place in the United Nations, for they thereby demonstrate that they no longer consider themselves to be united with the other United Nations.
Recalcitrant workers are expelled from companies, and recalcitrant juveniles are expelled from schools, and recalcitrant motorists have their licences withdrawn, and there is no place for recalcitrant nations that purport to be united, but then show only disrespect to their mother organisation, to their neighbours and even, on occasion, to their own citizens.
If the United Nations are to rally themselves in strength behind the bold statements set forth in the opening words of their Charter, then they must consider those words and their meaning and, if thought fit, redouble all efforts to ensure that:
those who resort to military force in pursuit of their national ambitions in preference to petitioning the United Nations as an organisation to plead justice for their claim shall be banished from the organisation; those against which such claims are raised and against whom a finding in law is handed down by the United Nations and which fail to obtemper that order shall likewise be banished from the organisation. The current UN has no provision for bringing those who flout its principles to heel. It must acquire one, or dissolve;
it shall be unlawful for any nation to maintain diplomatic connections to banished members. All future diplomatic contact shall require to be conducted via the United Nations. The United Nations unite as nations for the sake of unity; those whose conduct merits their banishment must deal not with individual members, but with the united front that those members seek to uphold. Upon banishing a member, the United Nations shall set forth a memorandum detailing the grounds for the banishment, and any state so banished shall be granted the opportunity to make good on the grounds for banishment, and subsequently apply for re-entry to the organisation;
citizens of banished countries may apply for resettlement to any of the other United Nations, which shall then be obliged to take such applicants in, for such is only natural for those who join in unity; and revolts and uprisings against banished nations’ leaderships shall be neither condemned by the United Nations, nor shall they receive any support from the United Nations. It is for the people of a nation to settle the domestic struggles that ensue from or preface the designation of a government that embraces breaches of the Charter. Representatives of the people are the people. But those who are unable to rise up or revolt shall be granted shelter from the ignominies practised by their banished governments, at least until such time as a banished nation has remedied the grounds for its banishment;
it shall be unlawful for those who breach the Charter and are banished from the United Nations to engage in any form of trade with any other member that is a United Nation. Any United Nation engaging in trade with such a banished member shall itself be banished until such time as it has ceased and desisted from its contravening practices. Thereupon it may, upon presentation of adequate proof, apply to rejoin the United Nations and thereby recommence trading with other United Nations; any trade conducted in the interim with non-member states of the United Nations shall thereupon cease.
The United Nations must unite nations in the pursuit of global peace and they, as an organisation, must be weaned away from engaging in the practice of acting as a safety net for the disgruntled citizens afflicted by war and tumult, injustice and persecution within their national borders.
This sounds hard, but it cannot truly be imagined that the hardships that such a draconian principle might occasion would be any harsher than those hardships that peoples of the world suffer year in, year out, as a consequence of acts engaged in with impunity by unaccountable regimes, reproach of which for flouting the Charter and its principles is not heeded. The UN must become a court of last instance for citizens, and a court of first instance for governments.
If the United Nations are given sufficient teeth and muscle to condemn and to praise members for fulfilment of the high aspirations set forth in the Charter that its members have signed (with annual prize ceremonies—why not?—for those that do well in their course work), then governments will think long and hard about oppressing their peoples, safe in the knowledge that they will suffer penury and condemnation the world over for their impudence. And, if they express indignation for such treatment at the hands of the UN, then their oppressed peoples certainly will not: they will cry with joy.
Much of this sounds like a surrender of sovereignty and subjection to suzerainty. It is. It needs to be. Because, although the United Nations have booked success in the past on the basis of being a voluntary club, the “club” idea has outgrown its purpose, if that ever was the purpose of the UNO. The organisation has, like many elite fora, become a bit of a gravy train, whose responsibilities have been scorned by outliers of the international diplomatic scene and whose future is being undermined, not least by seats on its Security Council being occupied by members there who flagrantly breach the very principles on which those seats were apportioned. If nations are unwilling to surrender their sovereignty in order to do what is right, even if they merely demur on the definition of right, do they then imagine that belligerent foreign policy will achieve the greatness that has not otherwise been thrust upon them, at birth or otherwise?
If the cry is that the world would end without its United Nations, then I suggest the world is doomed unless its United Nations unite, for to do otherwise is to, indeed, have a world without United Nations.
The offhandedness with which governments treat their people is a matter of concern to the United Nations, but is seemingly a matter of no concern to the governments that mistreat such people. Any lingering guilt that might remain in the minds of oppressive regimes is in some measure salved by the knowledge that the United Nations will succour to the outflows of refugees and asylum-seekers, assuming even that that is a concern to them. What the United Nations must do is reapportion the weighty concerns at governments’ actions to governments themselves.
If that is done, the United Nations may secure themselves a wholesome future, in which all cooperate to the benefit of all, none flouts the Charter at will, and all will is concentrated on the betterment of the Earth’s peoples. For, a nation is not defined by a line drawn on a map; it is defined by the spirit of fairness that imbues its intercourse with others, whether arising innately within the soul, or, if need be, enforced from without.
If fairness can prevail, the peoples of UN members will be assured happiness and prosperity. If it can’t, then the UN has outgrown its utility and the Earth’s peoples will face a pitiful destiny.
First, though, the United Nations’ organisation must look to its laurels, and must live up to the aspirations that, since 1948, it has set for itself.