The United Nations, despite all its myriad shortcomings and failures, still represents the best hope for humanity replacing war with dialogue and negotiations. And if it has had its failures, it also has had its successes. We have no way of knowing what might have happened in a number of cases if there had been no United Nations. I believe that it is very important these days simply to be an organization which raises people’s expectations.
The nations present at the founding of the UN in 1947 — and all those who joined it later — signed a document known as the Charter of the United Nations. The document clearly sets out the organization’s goals and we ought to have a look at it from time to time. The goals remain what they were at the founding:
— to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and — to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human being, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and — to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and — to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
And now my questions. To which I believe the answers are obvious. What on earth has happened to the UN? Has it become no more than a vehicle of war-mongers who control it? Are there no peace-mongers left who subscribe to its ideals? Who among us was not horrified by the repeated statements that if the UN did not surrender to the will of the US, then the organization would have to bear responsibility for marginalizing itself? Has the time come for us to call for resignations from the UN? Is the organization now morally bankrupt?
Arab News Features 25 December 2002
