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This month marked the 70th anniversary of the birth of the Charter of the United Nations—the founding and guiding document of the United Nations. Speaking at a celebratory event in San Francisco, where the UN Charter was signed into being in 1945, Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon referred to the "Glorious Gamble" that was the birth of the United Nations:
"Today, we take the idea of the United Nations for granted, but bringing it to life required huge leaps of statecraft to bridge differences. Through intense negotiations, the delegates realized their dream. They knew you do not just rebuild broken societies with bricks and mortar, but with ideas and values. With the adoption of the Charter, a world in rubble found a path to renewal."
The event brought together a number of high-profile voices in the world of international policy making: from Nancy Pelosi to Malala Yousafzai. Ban Ki Moon used the opportunity to call for solidarity within the UN in achieving the goals of the next seventy-years: “In signing this document, the founders achieved what many thought impossible. It falls to us to heed the Charter's call to 'unite our strength' and to use their creation—the United Nations—for the common good,”
The soaring rhetoric was followed by a call for reflection. Ban Ki Moon lauded the UN for catalyzing the dismantlement of colonization, assisting in the defeat of apartheid, and helping to mediate and maintain peace throughout the world. However, he acknowledged the UN's shortcomings in the past seven decades. "Yet tragedy has also been with us every step of the way. Genocide, war, and a thousand daily indignities and abuse plague far too many people, especially women. Conflict has forced more people to flee their homes today than at any time since the Second World War. Forces of division are on the march, peddling the false promise of isolation in ever more interdependent world."
The UN has not become the cornucopia of peace that some institutional liberalism theorists made it out to be, and its history is marked by more high-profile failures than successes. From the Khmer Rouge, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur, and now Syria, the UN has gained a reputation for inaction. While the UN might truly be the "hope and home of all humankind" as Ban Ki Moon claims it is, often times the gears of justice and peace are far too slow to engage.
The current UN is very different than the one envisioned in San Francisco 70 years ago. With a massive system of specialized agencies and affiliated organizations, a peacekeeping force nearing over one hundred thousand personnel, and a complex matrix of international norms, the UN has evolved to better suit a globalized age. This year, the General Assembly will finalize the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the new Sustainable Development Goals that attempt to address the needs of a developing global population. However one aspect of the UN that has remained static since its incubation 70 years ago: the Security Council and its outdated veto-power system.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the UN has been the veto power system of the Security Council, which was first codified in Chapter VI of the UN Charter. Designed to ensure that the five principal founding members would never have grounds to leave the UN, the veto system has been censured harshly since its inception. Many point to the veto system as the main cause for UN inaction in gross and systematic crimes against humanity and question whether the veto power of the five permanent members is sustainable for an evolving geopolitical landscape.
Ban Ki Moon concluded his statements by claiming, "the Charter is our compass." For almost all of the aspects of the United Nations, the Charter has indeed acted as this guiding "compass," steering the development of the UN and allowing for adaptation of the gargantuan transnational organization to the changing times. But for the keystone of the United Nations, the Security Council, the Charter has been an iron law rather than a compass. As the UN looks to transition into a new age of international diplomacy, hopefully the Charter will act as a lodestar to transform the Security Council.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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70 years of the United Nations
July 21, 2015
This month marked the 70th anniversary of the birth of the Charter of the United Nations—the founding and guiding document of the United Nations. Speaking at a celebratory event in San Francisco, where the UN Charter was signed into being in 1945, Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon referred to the "Glorious Gamble" that was the birth of the United Nations:
"Today, we take the idea of the United Nations for granted, but bringing it to life required huge leaps of statecraft to bridge differences. Through intense negotiations, the delegates realized their dream. They knew you do not just rebuild broken societies with bricks and mortar, but with ideas and values. With the adoption of the Charter, a world in rubble found a path to renewal."
The event brought together a number of high-profile voices in the world of international policy making: from Nancy Pelosi to Malala Yousafzai. Ban Ki Moon used the opportunity to call for solidarity within the UN in achieving the goals of the next seventy-years: “In signing this document, the founders achieved what many thought impossible. It falls to us to heed the Charter's call to 'unite our strength' and to use their creation—the United Nations—for the common good,”
The soaring rhetoric was followed by a call for reflection. Ban Ki Moon lauded the UN for catalyzing the dismantlement of colonization, assisting in the defeat of apartheid, and helping to mediate and maintain peace throughout the world. However, he acknowledged the UN's shortcomings in the past seven decades. "Yet tragedy has also been with us every step of the way. Genocide, war, and a thousand daily indignities and abuse plague far too many people, especially women. Conflict has forced more people to flee their homes today than at any time since the Second World War. Forces of division are on the march, peddling the false promise of isolation in ever more interdependent world."
The UN has not become the cornucopia of peace that some institutional liberalism theorists made it out to be, and its history is marked by more high-profile failures than successes. From the Khmer Rouge, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur, and now Syria, the UN has gained a reputation for inaction. While the UN might truly be the "hope and home of all humankind" as Ban Ki Moon claims it is, often times the gears of justice and peace are far too slow to engage.
The current UN is very different than the one envisioned in San Francisco 70 years ago. With a massive system of specialized agencies and affiliated organizations, a peacekeeping force nearing over one hundred thousand personnel, and a complex matrix of international norms, the UN has evolved to better suit a globalized age. This year, the General Assembly will finalize the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the new Sustainable Development Goals that attempt to address the needs of a developing global population. However one aspect of the UN that has remained static since its incubation 70 years ago: the Security Council and its outdated veto-power system.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the UN has been the veto power system of the Security Council, which was first codified in Chapter VI of the UN Charter. Designed to ensure that the five principal founding members would never have grounds to leave the UN, the veto system has been censured harshly since its inception. Many point to the veto system as the main cause for UN inaction in gross and systematic crimes against humanity and question whether the veto power of the five permanent members is sustainable for an evolving geopolitical landscape.
Ban Ki Moon concluded his statements by claiming, "the Charter is our compass." For almost all of the aspects of the United Nations, the Charter has indeed acted as this guiding "compass," steering the development of the UN and allowing for adaptation of the gargantuan transnational organization to the changing times. But for the keystone of the United Nations, the Security Council, the Charter has been an iron law rather than a compass. As the UN looks to transition into a new age of international diplomacy, hopefully the Charter will act as a lodestar to transform the Security Council.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
