TRANSCRIPT
“Gentleman, in accordance with the articles of the charter, delegates having been appointed to serve on the Security Council, and the meeting, having been regularly convened. I declare the Security Council, duly constituted, and in session.”
In October 1945, the United Nations Charter entered into force.
In 1946, Australia's Norman Makin became the first president of the UN Security Council.
“The Australian government is fully sensible of the great responsibility which has been placed upon it, and of the importance and high dignity of the office which Australia has been called upon to occupy. In discharging my duties as the first president of the Security Council, I shall endeavour to act in accordance with the best traditions of such a responsible office.”
This year, the world's attention is once again focusing in on the role and relevance of the United Nations in keeping the peace and upholding international law and order.
To understand the strengths and the shortfalls of the United Nations, it's important to first understand how it came into being.
Associate Professor Imogen Saunders is the Director of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University.
She says that the initial success of the UN relied on allowing the permanent 5 Security Council members - the US, China, France, Russia and the U-K - to maintain a degree of control.
“So going back to pre the UN era, the League of Nations was the world's first attempt at a multilateral institution, and it failed in part because the US never joined it. Post World War 2 then when the allied countries got together, there was a shared understanding that any multilateral system that was going to work had to have the five big powers as they were at the time included. And the way that this was done in part was to give each of those powers a veto power”
But while the additional powers granted to the permanent five made the founding of the organisation a success, it also set it up for perhaps its biggest limitation.
In this archival footage from the UN's Dateline program in 1959, host Randy Kraft discusses the struggles of the security council.
“The phoenix is the symbol of hope. The United Nations security council, which meets in the room where I am standing, is the only instrument empowered by the peoples of the world with the responsibility of keeping the peace. It is far from perfect. Its members are human, the countries that make up its membership are often locked in bitter struggle.”
Of the Security Council's fifteen members, only the permanent five are afforded veto power, allowing them to strike down any resolution they deem not in their interests.
Dr Saunders says it's a running joke in international law, that talks of security council reform have been happening since ... well, since the security council was formed.
“Throughout the history of the UN that veto power has been used, or at least the threat of the veto power has stopped the UN from acting on certain issues. So we're seeing that now, particularly in light of the Gaza conflict, but we've seen it for various things throughout the history of the UN during the Cold War, for instance. Any issue that a permanent member has a particular interest in is going to be very hard to get security council action on it.”
With Russia invading Ukraine, China violating international law in the South China Sea and the United States providing military aid for Israel despite ongoing violations of international law and resolutions, the permanent five's additional powers seem to pose a serious threat to the very values the UN was founded on.
President of the United Nations Association of Australia, Dr Donnell Davis, says it's crucial that the law makers are not as bad as those breaking the law.
“We are so concerned at the moment with the wars that are happening in the Middle East. It started off, it started off thousands of years ago, but how the October 7th last year rolled out, and what's happened in the last year has just been unthinkable in this age when we are well-educated, sophisticated people all around the world, we should all know diplomacy skills. We should all have empathy and compassion, and we all should make sure that no child dies, no person should starve to death. Starving people to death is not a war tool or a war toy to play with.”
In 2024, the conflict in the Middle East and Israel's non-stop bombing and destruction of Gaza has dominated the news cycle, political discourse and even the streets and university campuses around the world.
It has shifted engagement in domestic politics in countries across multiple continents and it has forced the world's eyes not only toward the Middle East, but towards the United Nations.
But the conflict is not new, nor is the United Nations' close and intimate involvement in it.
Here's UN's Dateline host Sonny Fox, way back in 1958, speaking about the role of UNRWA.
“But real peace probably cannot come to the Middle East until there is a solution of the critical problem of the Palestine refugee. In 1948 several hundred thousand Arabs left their homes in the area which became the State of Israel. These are the refugees now numbering about 1 million, who are cared for by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.”
This year, the weaknesses of the United Nations have come into full view as the US, Israel's top ally and weapons supplier, used its veto power to strike down a Security Council resolution recommending a vote on Palestinian Statehood.
An Oxfam report titled Vetoing Humanity found that the permanent five, in particular Russia and the United States, were responsible for using their veto powers to prolong conflicts, with most exercised on resolutions regarding Ukraine, Syria and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Dr Saunders says while the utopian vision of every state having equal say is a nice idea, the practicality of getting the powerful states to agree to those terms is very unlikely.
“ So would it be better if the five members didn't have a veto? And I think there's, in some ways, yes, but there's two big problems with that as a solution. The first is just practically speaking, you'd have to, the way the system's set up at the moment, you'd have to get the five members to agree to give up their veto power, and that seems incredibly unlikely. The second reason, I think what you'd risk if you stripped those five members of their veto power is you'd risk one or several of them actually turning their back on the United Nations system. And I think that would be a terrible thing for international order and for international law more generally.”
Even when a resolution does pass in the Security Council or a ruling is passed down by the International Courts, the non-binding nature of international law means member states can refuse to abide by the ruling, without any legal consequences.
The United Nations has no standing army, despite the charter envisioning the potential for the use of force in exceptional circumstances, actual force would require member-states to send their own troops into foreign territory.
However, Dr Saunders says the power of non-binding laws are not entirely without merit.
“You know, one example is in the news, quite recently, it was the UK's announcement that it is giving the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius. Now, the legal history of that is there was actually an advisory opinion before the International Court of Justice, which said that the UK had breached its duties to Mauritius in the process of decolonization, and that the Chagos Islands should in fact belong to Mauritius. Now, that's a non-binding decision. It can't be enforced. So it's one of those things where you might look at it and say, well, what's the value of this? That nothing can happen. But what it did happen is it contributed to enough public pressure on the UK that the government decided that actually it would go ahead and enact this treaty with Mauritius and do what the court told it to, even though it didn't legally have to do so. “
Often described as archaic, the founding structures of the United Nations Security Council have persisted as the world, warfare and the interaction of states have changed in dramatic ways.
“We are using old tools in the toolkit. The United Nations declaration itself is 79 years old. Our human rights declaration is just a little bit younger than that. So the thing is we do need to reset.”
Dr Davis says the work of the United Nations should not be limited to the work of the security council.
“The Security Council definitely needs reform. There's things that are already happening in that area. There are other ways of getting things done that don't necessarily what you see on TV about Security Council. If we just relied on UN for the Security Council, boy, we would have no hope. But we've, because we've got so many other areas of the UN to work on specific issues, it does give me hope.”
Earlier this year, the United Nations adopted the Pact for the Future, which included commitments to the reform and transformation of the security council in a way that was more representative, democratic, and accountable.
Dr Davis says the decisions and changes being made now are crucial for the success of the future generation.
“So the thing is, in our area, Asia Pacific, we've got more than 60% of our population under age 25. So the youth have to inherit this stuff, they have to live it, and we oldies, I call myself an oldie. We oldies really won't be around necessarily in 80 years. So how can we possibly expect these rules that were written by my grandparents to be any use to the young ones of today or alternatively to an unborn generations now? So the way that we need to craft our rules for the future or principles and values have to be useful for the young ones now and their children and their children.”
