Is United Nations Relevant Any More ?

| by N.S.Venkataraman

( August 2, 2014, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The ongoing war between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza strip, where more than one thousand people have been killed shows the United Nations in very poor light. In several other areas of conflict such as in Egypt , Syria and Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and others, United Nations has practically played no role in promoting peace and avoiding war and killings. The organisation appears to be now left without ideas and action plans and seem to be operating in vacuum.

The Secretary General of United Nations appears to be satisfied simply by issuing statements and writing letters to the concerned nations in conflict . The ground reality is that the governments in different countries do not seem to be paying any attention to the appeals of UNO for peace and harmony. This makes many wonder as to whether U N has lost its relevance and importance and outlived its utility and purpose.

In all the areas of conflicts, United States of America is involved in one form or the other and directly or indirectly. In the case of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, USA has unilaterally imposed sanction against Russia without taking the UN O into confidence or discussing the matter with the member countries in the United Nations Assembly. Obviously, USA also seems to think that UNO has become a non-entity.

Now, we see, several nations forming economic and interactive groups such as BRICS, SAARC, G 8 etc. and such moves to form alliances between a few countries, perhaps, reflect on the lack of confidence of these countries on the role of UNO in representing the interests of the weak nations and the suspicion of several countries that United Nations is becoming irrelevant.

What is particularly surprising and even shocking in the present scenario is that the Secretary General of the United Nations, who is responsible for running and managing the organisation true to its purpose and role, is not protesting. What is the view of the Secretary General of U N with regard to the inability of UNO to interfere effectively to prevent conflicts and ensure peace is not very clear? The Secretary general is not speaking on the present helplessness of UNO and he is yet to be seen to be making any attempt to mobilise the world opinion about individual governments ignoring the appeals of UNO and rendering it as a toothless body. This makes many people think that the Secretary General lacks confidence and courage of conviction, that is expected of a person holding such crucial position in a world body.

The UNO essentially must function as conscience keeper of the world and call a spade as spade and condemn unequivocally those who are responsible for creating and promoting conflicts. For such functioning of UNO, it needs to show high level of commitment to the cause of world peace and harmony . It must have the stamp of a person in the leadership position with enormous moral authority and the world wide acceptance.

With United Nations now functioning as a mere cosmetic body and as a routine meeting place for academic discussion forum, the focus of the world towards the need for peace and the support for deprived nations is in jeopardy. Such situation should not be allowed to persist and continue by peace loving citizens of the world.

What causes particularly even more concern today is the fact that the sane voice of the peace loving citizens of the world are not being heard , protesting against the willful belittling of the United Nations by several governments. Those concerned about world peace should join together and start a world movement for restoring the rightful place for United Nations in the global arena.