President Zelenskyy exposes United Nations’ inaction
Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an impassioned appeal to the United Nations security council yesterday to take action against Russia in response to its invasion of his country. Appearing via video link, the Ukrainian president likened the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha, the town outside Kyiv where more than 400 civilians have been found to have been tortured and killed, to those of Isis in Syria. He warned that even worse crimes may yet be discovered in other cities and regions from which Russian forces have withdrawn. At the heart of Mr Zelensky’s powerful speech was an urgent challenge: what are you, the security council of an institution founded to prevent wars, going to do to stop this one?
It’s a good question. Article 1 of the UN charter says that the purposes of the United Nations is “to maintain international peace and security, and to that end to take collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”. Of course, the UN has not always lived up to those ideals. During the Cold War it was hamstrung by the stand-off between the West and the Communist bloc. Too often it has appeared little more than a talking shop, providing a platform for dictators and human rights abusers to make a mockery of international law. Nonetheless, the Ukraine conflict marks a watershed.
For the first time, one of the five permanent members of the security council is in flagrant breach of its charter. The entire postwar system of international law underpinned by the UN hinges on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of member states. The 1945 convention in San Francisco that agreed the charter established the five victorious powers, the US, the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France, as guarantors of that system but also gave them a veto over security council decisions. That was considered a price worth paying to secure their involvement, thereby avoiding the failures of the prewar League of Nations. Now Russia is using that veto to fight an illegal war with impunity.
Mr Zelensky wants the security council to either expel Russia or dissolve itself. The reality is that it will do neither. Articles 5 and 6 of the charter provide for the suspension and expulsion of members that have persistently violated its principles. But both are subject to a recommendation of the security council, which means that Russia can wield its veto. …
In 1936, the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations to protect his people from a war of conquest by fascist Italy, arguing that what was at stake was “the very existence of the League of Nations . . . the value of promises made to small states that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured”. The League did nothing and three years later, a world war had begun. Mr Zelensky is right to challenge the UN to prove that its model is not similarly broken.
