The United Nations celebrates its 70th anniversary this week, and it deserves our wholehearted support for trying to be a force for good, if not our wholehearted congratulations on its modest delivery on its aspirational aims. It is essential that the nations of the world have a neutral forum where they can discuss both the immediate and long-term issues of global governance. The UN and its various agencies have done a vast amount of good, even down to giving an important political lead with the Millennium Development Goals and their recent transformation into the Sustainable Development Goals.
But the glorious early hopes of better global governance from the UN have been wrecked by superpower politics and gross favouritism of rogue nations that are protected by the veto of the great powers. North Korea is an obvious survivor thanks to China’s protection, but a more immediate outrage is the impunity with which Israel has pursued its miserable course of occupation and horror with regular American support through its use of the veto.
The UN General Assembly has passed more than 370 resolutions from 1947 onward and the Security Council has passed 226 resolutions which include recommending the partition of the British Mandate; and putting forward the basis of land for peace. But despite all these repeated condemnations, the reality in Israel and Palestine remains unchanged. Israel pursues its course with impunity, and the US continues to refuse to allow Israel to get the condemnation it deserves and any subsequent action to make that judgement felt.
It is dangerous that Washington’s refusal to take the United Nations seriously on Israel has spread into a more widespread disdain for the UN institutions, exemplified by its refusal to pay its dues for many years, and its increasingly unilateral mindset when it has taken action in the world, often resulting in long-term failure as the necessity of working within a global consensus becomes increasingly more essential.
