The world has changed since the UN was founded, and the international organisation has not kept up, writes Hassan Nafaa* The high-level team formed by the secretary-general of the United Nations at the end of last year to examine threats facing the world has finished writing its report. It was sent it to the secretary-general who then passed it on to the General Assembly. A Safer World is our Shared Responsibility is 133 pages long in its Arabic version, and contains 101 proposals. The most interesting aspect of the report is its classification of the threats facing the world, ranking them in order of significance. It divides them into six groups, the first being economic and social threats (including poverty, contagious diseases and environmental damage), followed by armed conflict between nations, internal conflict (including civil wars, genocide and acts of brutality) and weapons of mass destruction. Terrorism is in fifth place, with organised crime coming last. The ranking system is based on clear and unbiased criterion ó the number of actual and potential victims. Regardless of whether the US approves of this ranking system or not the report is justified in placing economic and social threats in first place. The number of those who die or fall ill as a result of poverty, pollution and disease is greater than the total number of those affected by all the other threat categories combined. The report contains terrifying statistics: 14 million children die every year from poverty and inadequate health care, six million of them of hunger. Around one billion individuals (approximately one-sixth of the world�s population) suffer from malnutrition, and twice that number (i.e. two billion individuals) do not receive adequate health care. Some 95 per cent of these individuals live in poor countries. In Africa alone 30 million people are infected with AIDS, a situation that will have severe economic repercussions for the foreseeable future. There are currently 11 million African children who have been orphaned by AIDS. Depressingly, the report admits that the world has been slow to provide the support necessary to eradicate this plague. By 1996 the total amount that had been spent worldwide on fighting the disease was no more than $250 million. By 2002 that had increased to $2.8 billion, though the report suggests at least $10 billion dollars a year is needed. Compare these figures to Washington�s readiness to launch an illegal war against Iraq which, according to the lowest estimates, has cost $80 billion. Another point of interest is the report�s lengthy digression ó with its mix of implicit revulsion and sarcasm ó in which it compares the haste with which the international community responded to the events of 11 September with the moronic sluggishness in the face of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The report points out that Rwanda lost three times as many people per day ó over a period of 100 successive days ó as were killed on 11 September, and that the Security Council, instead of reacting rapidly waited until two weeks had passed since the massacres began before withdrawing the majority of its peace-keeping forces. Indeed, it couldn�t bring itself to term the events in Rwanda as massacres until a month after they had begun, and took six weeks to send a delegation to the country to try and resolve the crisis. UN peace-keeping forces were only deployed once the genocide had come to an end. Since the current American administration is acting as if the only problem in the world is terrorism, and is trying to convince the rest of the international community of the this falsehood, the report had no option but to remind them of facts they would rather forget. Perhaps they realise, albeit belatedly, that deliberately turning a blind eye to economic and social problems is one of the main causes of the rise and spread of the terrorism. The report demonstrates that the world we live in is vastly different to the world of 1945, the world into which the United Nations was born. The nature of the threats we face today are no longer the threats that gave rise to the UN. Thus the methods, mechanisms and even the philosophy for combating these threats must be changed in their entirety if we truly want to become more effective in dealing with them and make the world a more peaceful and secure place. The UN�s charter for general security is based on the perception that military aggression by one country against another is the most serious threat faced by the international. The charter never took into account the possibility that an international player might undertake industrial activities that could pollute the environment to a dangerous degree, or practise an economic policy that could impoverish and bankrupt others and therefore neglected to put in place any mechanisms compelling the international community to work together in fighting major natural or environmental disasters. Logically speaking, any change in the nature of the threats facing the world should lead to a change in the techniques, mechanisms and philosophy for confronting these threats. In other words, the agency entrusted with world peace and security must be responsible for confronting everything that threatens peace and security. It must be given the authority to issue binding resolutions, not just in cases of traditional military aggression but in all situations that threaten serious harm to mankind ó including natural disasters and cases where there is a serious infringement of international law. In other words, if the rationale of globalisation is to be applied compulsorily in terms of obligations and responsibilities, then it must be applied with the same conviction in terms of rights and possessions. The international community must take a decisive step towards converting the Security Council from an international police agency into an executive authority in its broadest sense. And here we come to the heart of the matter. Whether local or international, any executive authority must be first and foremost a legitimate authority ó i.e. democratically elected. Since the international community has yet to reach a stage of maturity that allows it to elect a global government, then seats on the Security Council must be filled with representatives from the UN�s member states, so that the council�s composition reflects the international balance of power. This may have been the case in the years immediately following World War II but as everybody now agrees ó including the authors of the report ó it is certainly not the case today. This means that the Security Council lacks legitimacy. Quite simply, it does not reflect the current balance of power on the international stage, and it will continue to lack legitimacy until it is reconstituted in such a way as to take into account the developments in the world order that have taken place since the end of World War II. So what do the report�s authors propose? The authors do not agree on any single formula for reforming the Security Council, except that they all believe the council should comprise 24 seats and that the seats should be evenly distributed between the four continents (i.e. each receive six seats), even though the number of countries on each continent is not the same (i.e. Africa 53, Asia-Pacific region 56, Europe 47 and the Americas 35). In Model A six new permanent seats would be added to the council in addition to the current five, and they would be distributed as follows: Africa two, Asia two, Europe one and the Americas one. The remaining 13 non-permanent seats should be allocated as follows: four, three, two, four (following the order given above). In Model B there are no additions to the current five permanent seats, but eight semi-permanent seats would be created that last for four years. These new seats would be distributed evenly between the four continents (i.e. two seats per continent). The remaining 11 non- permanent seats would be allocated as follows: four, three, one, three. It is clear that whichever of the two models form the basis for serious debate a relatively fair distribution of seats is assured despite a continuing degree of bias towards the Americas and Europe. However, the following observations should be made about the two models. The new permanent seats to be added in Model A would not have the right of veto. In other words there will now be two levels of differentiation in membership of the council, as opposed to the one level currently in existence: the distinction between permanent and non- permanent states on the one hand, and between permanent states with the right of veto and permanent states without the right of veto on the other. This is unacceptable. Any of the five old permanent member-states would be able to obstruct the will of the Security Council and block its resolutions. This seems to be the reason that the report�s authors preferred restricting the power of veto to the old permanent states, realising that they would not be prepared to surrender this power under any circumstances, and that it would be better not to increase the number of countries who were able to obstruct council business. This situation is completely unjustifiable. It is not in the interests of the international community to give one country the opportunity to delay or challenge the will of the community. Since the majority needed to issue a resolution in Security Council is due to change after the expansion of the council, it is vital that the new majority settle on a new system in which, for example, the opposition of two or three permanent members is required to block a resolution. It seems that the team that prepared the report lacked courage and adopted an overly realistic approach, preferring not to meddle in the details of this tricky issue for fear of provoking the United States. It is far from certain whether the bashful approach adopted by the current report will convince everybody ó and the great powers in particular ó to back down enough to allow the UN to get to grips with the fearsome challenges facing the international community. It would have been much better had the report�s authors abandoned their excessive timidity and instead proposed alternative solutions to the great number of problems that the international community is facing. The team could have been much franker when they discussed cases in which the Security Council exceeded its authority, passing resolutions of questionable constitutionality, and might have proposed means enabling the General Assembly to maintain political oversight of the Security Council and the International Courts of Justice to maintain legal oversight of the same body. This would prevent the council from turning into a dictatorial body that contravenes the very international law it was established to protect. * The writer is professor of political science, Cairo University.
