THE United Nations has failed humanity yet again. Not for want of trying.
For weeks, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been trying to get the UN Security Council (UNSC) to pass a resolution for global ceasefire of conflicts so that the World Health Organisation (WHO) can focus on fighting Covid-19, but American pettiness has got in the way.
The US administration — read President Donald Trump — just didn't want any mention of WHO. Not even an indirect mention such as "specialised health agencies" passed the Trump triviality test, according to the Reuters news agency, which had access to the draft text.
Someone needs to tell Trump that Covid-19 is bigger than him.
Trump has a China problem, and he is taking it out on WHO. He also doesn't seem to care that lives are being lost in battlefields around the world, either to bullets or Covid-19. After all, many, if not all, wars have the stamp of the US. The US army needn't even be there. Proxies and mercenaries do it for the American eagle. Lives of others are cheap to this nation with so much of "othering" history. If inane phrases can trump lives, then this says a lot of the American administration.
The fault is not in the people, for they will always be fallible, but in the institutions built to be run by such people. Unhappily, the American hand in the shape of president Franklin D. Roosevelt was there right from the start.
With much help from British prime minister Winston Churchill and the Atlantic Charter. Even the name, United Nations, is that of Roosevelt. No, we do not have anything against a name that has an American origin. We leave pettifogging to those who are so inclined. What we are against is the intent to pull wool over the world's eyes that we are united at all.
There isn't a semblance of it.
How can it, when the world's five nations — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China — sitting permanently in UNSC, armed with veto powers, dictate terms to 188 sovereign nations? For long, vetoes have killed resolutions that could have stitched the world together again. What's worse, vetoes have killed people around the world. And still do. Because these permanent five of UNSC seem to take turns to exercise the veto. A just world cannot be shaped thus. UN has to be reformed, and the best place to start is UNSC. Vetoes must go. They hinder, not
help, in bringing about international peace and security. Underrepresentation is an issue as well. Africa, with 54 countries, has been pushing for membership in UNSC for long, but this historical injustice remains to be redressed. Also, outside this only law-making body of UN are Latin America and the Caribbean.
Indian delegate Syed Akbaruddin, speaking on behalf of the G4 (Brazil, Germany, Japan and India) on the UNSC reform plans at the UN General Assembly in 2018 put it thus: "Naysayers cannot be allowed to cast a dark shadow and hold the overwhelming majority back." He is right. This is not just the din of the quarrelsome. The call for reform has a basis. Evidence is aplenty. At each critical moment the world needed UN the most, UNSC crippled it into inaction. If Roosevelt really meant to create a "United Nations", this is definitely not it. Little wonder, Trumpian triviality triumphs.