In three week’s time, the UN will host the biggest gathering ever of world leaders ever. More than 170 will be in New York to celebrate the body’s 60 years of existence but also to vote on reforms designed to bring it into the 21st century. So far most attention has focused on reform of the Security Council: Will it be expanded? Should India, Japan, Brazil and Germany be made permanent members as they demand? Will that include the right to a veto? Will an African state (possibly Egypt, Nigeria or South Africa) be allowed to join the council as the African Union demands? This debate alone promises to be a bruising one.
But there is far more to UN reform than who gets a permanent seat and a veto. Another issue also to be discussed and voted on is that of genocide. The UN and international agencies believe that the existing convention on genocide, adopted in 1948, is inadequate; it may be good at defining it and making it an international crime, but it is no good at preventing it. Who can disagree? Rwanda, Sarajevo, Cambodia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone — to mention just some of the most recent horrors — are testimony to that inadequacy.
What the UN agencies want is the right to intervene, militarily if necessarily, to prevent genocide happening in places where the government of the country concerned is either unable or unwilling to do so. The final details of an agreement on this are now being discussed. But here too, not everyone agrees with reform. The EU, most African nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and much of the Southeast Asia and the Far East support the change. For a variety of reasons, others are opposed. Countries such as Syria, Iran, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt and Algeria see it as a charter for intervention. The US, India and Brazil, on the other hand, are worried that because the international community would be obliged to intervene in such cases, they, as major military powers or with experience of peacekeeping, would end up being forced into the role of policeman.
But neither of these concerns holds water, even though on the face of it, the proposed reform is a direct assault on the principle of sovereignty. No one believes in the absolute validity of the principle any more — and rightly so. To do so would be to say that the international community should not have intervened in Kosovo. Sovereignty can never be regarded as sacrosanct in the face of something as terrible as genocide. In any event, it is the UN that would have to decide if genocide is taking place.
Those who oppose this reform are in danger of being seen, at worst, soft on genocide, at the very least irresponsible in the face of it. Events like the Rwandan genocide and the massacres in Srebrenica are humanity’s shame. Sovereignty must not be allowed to be an excuse to let such evil happen again. The reform should be supported and enacted.
