Play it again, Kofi
By Rodrick McCrae, The Brock Press
Feb 8, 2005 — As funny as it sounds, in my mind I’ve always thought of the United Nations kind of like an old classic rock band like The Rolling Stones, or the leftover Beatles.
All of them got their start when our parents, or grandparents, were still very young, over time they’ve gotten new musicians, or diplomats, to fill the vacancies left by others that have died or quit the group, they’ve had a few good hits under their belts, and each has a massive hit single that everyone wants them to play when they are in concert. For The Stones that song is “Satisfaction,” for The Beatles it’s “Hey Jude,” and for the UN it’s protecting the peace and human rights of everyone on this planet. But if you listen closely, the songs just aren’t the same as they used to be.
My case in point is the recent announcement that genocide has not taken place in the Darfur region of Sudan. I admit I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I don’t know what else to call government backed militias targeting a country’s ethnic minority. To me this announcement illustrates what is wrong with UN, and has been wrong for as long as far back as I can remember. In fact the announcement reminded me of a news clip I saw of a U.S. State Department press conference from 1994.
It was one of those daily press conferences where a low level flunky gives an update on what the US is doing in the world that day, but of course at that time a lot of the world was wondering about what exactly the US would do in Rwanda. A few reporters asked the State Department rep what the U.S. was doing, and he said that although “acts of genocide” had taken place it was not an official genocide therefore the U.S. would not be sending any aid to the area. After hearing that a reporter quickly shot back, “How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?” From what I remember, the rep stuttered and stammered before quickly ending the press conference.
So what’s wrong with the UN? In my humble opinion, it’s the Security Council. For those of you who don’t know, the UN has two main voting bodies, the General Assembly – where all nations meet to discuss issues – and the Security Council – a smaller panel that makes the majority of decisions you read about in the news.
The Security Council is made up of 15 members, five permanent members and 10 members that rotate after two year terms. These 15 countries determine which sanctions that the world should impose or lift, which conflict zones the world will send peace keepers to, or which ones they will ignore. More accurately, the five permanent members determine this because they have veto power over any resolution that comes before them.
Who are these all-powerful members? Most of you can probably guess, but for those of you who can’t they are the United States, England, Russia, China and France. So these are the countries that decide which issues are more important than others. These are the countries that have voted to send peace keepers to Bosnia, and to downsize the amount of peace keepers in Rwanda.
It seems insane to give five countries control over the major issues confronting this brave new world of ours, but that’s why there has been a large movement recently to reform the UN. In fact, a panel tabled 100 suggestions to improve the way that the UN conducts itself, I’m not exactly sure of the precise number, but I think it was around that. Out of those Secretary General Kofi Annan gets to whittle that list to a smaller and more manageable one.
Out of that list though, it’s expected that he will include the suggestion to expand the Security Council. Personally I doubt that that measure would help, the trouble lies with the veto power of the permanent members. Let the permanent members stay on the council, but strip them of their power over the rest of the council.
But of course that would never happen, the permanent members would rather die before they give the veto power up. So for the foreseeable future, to me anyway, the UN will remain like a classic band, the musicians will change, but they will always be playing the same tune.