IN ITS half-century of existence, the United Nations has never been a universally praised, or even universally accepted, organization. In spite of criticism and controversy it has managed to live on and, at times, has even had some successes. Within the past few years, however, a series of scandals has exposed deep-rooted flaws in the United Nations. Diplomats and U.N. officials have long proposed bureaucratic modifications, but by now it ought to be clear to observers of all political stripes that the organization is in need of a radical remaking. If, as seems very likely, those reforms prove impossible to achieve, then the United States and its allies need to consider an even more radical solution: abolishing and replacing the United Nations.
With few exceptions, the United Nations has failed to live up to its founders' vision of an organization that advanced international peace, security and human rights. Out of all the great problems in the world, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, genocide and religious and political oppression, the United Nations has done little, if anything, to solve them. In the past 12 years alone, millions of people have died and continue to die in genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, with almost no U.N. intervention to speak of. Meanwhile, the body supposed to monitor human rights violations, the U.N. Human Rights Council, currently includes such human rights abusers as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The body it replaced, the Human Rights Comission, had been even worse, featuring Libya, Syria, Vietnam and Sudan.
The real problem with the United Nations is not bureaucratic or procedural but a compositional one. The United Nations ought to have strict standards for granting membership to governments. States that violate basic human rights and put the security of the world at risk should not be allowed to maintain membership in the organization.
For a perfect example of this problem, look at one particularly egregious speech made last week. The world witnessed the spectacle of Hugo Chavez, the despotic ruler of Venezuela, giving a speech that would make Stalin proud in front of the U.N. General Assembly. In the speech, Chavez called President Bush a "devil," accused the United States of harboring terrorists and even had the nerve to criticize American efforts to promote democracy. This came from a ruler who made public criticism punishable by 40 months in jail and in whose country political protesters are brutally tortured, according to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report. A week earlier, Chavez's ally Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, gave a speech in which he called for the return of the 12th Imam, a sort of Shiite messiah.
The fundamental problem, then, at the United Nations is that nearly all the world's governments are treated as equal members. Liberal democracies like Great Britain are grouped with oppressive tyrannies like Venezuela and sponsors of terrorism like Iran. The United Nations ought to be limited to legitimate states alone. Admittedly, legitimacy is a vague term, but some basic criteria can be established. Governments must behave peacefully to and respect the sovereignty of neighboring states, unless their neighbors pose a clear danger to their security. The second criterion for a legitimate government concerns its treatment of its own people and is more difficult to set a standard for. The government must demonstrate a respect for human rights in its internal affairs.
Critics may accuse this plan of being ethnocentric and biased against non-Western cultures. What is important to remember, though, is that the actual form of the government is left unspecified. Being a democratic government is not the same as being a legitimate state. It is certainly possible for a government to be supported by a majority of its citizens, but if it persecutes minorities and violates the sovereignty of its neighbors, it is illegitimate. Conversely, it is conceivable that a government could be much less democratic than the Western states but still treat its citizens and neighbors justly. This will be certainly be rare, as liberal states tend to be democratic, but is certainly conceivable. Human rights are universal, and governments, no matter what form, have an absolute duty to uphold them.
This call for reform may seem to extreme, but if the United Nations is to have any positive effect on the world, it is necessary in times such as ours, when terrorists, oil-funded tyrants and nuclear proliferation threaten the well-being of billions, we can scarcely afford another half-century of ineffectiveness at the United Nations.
Stephen Parsley's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at sparsley@cavalierdaily.com.
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