EDITORIAL
from issue no. 07/08 - 2005
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On the subject of the UN
There has been talk for a long time of reforming the UN and there have been working groups, attempts at hijacking, search for consensus in various directions. Everyone is agreed that it must be reformed, so much so as to bring about for the moment a global devaluation that to me seems unjust. Not least because proposals and counter-proposals focus on the Security Council, in a very critical framework furthermore
Giulio Andreotti
The city of Falluja destroyed by American bombing in October 2004
On the Security Council there are five fixed countries and ten rotating ones. Profound changes have led the Chinese seat being assigned to the People’s Republic, after a long period in which representation was left to the island of Taiwan. Russia also, after the collapse of the USSR, has kept its fixed seat with the relative power of veto.
The debate has moved on to the widening of the pentarchy and on a possible mechanism of belonging to the Council differentiated over time, for groups of States. Italy also made proposals in the latter direction, that however involved a graduation of importance perhaps more undesirable than the inheritance enjoyed exclusively from the Big Five.
Two countries have knocked with insistence to join the Council in fixed fashion: Germany and Japan: both counting on the support of the United States that seemed diplomatically acquired.
The problem of Germany is particularly delicate because it highlights the non-existence of a common foreign and security policy. It is the direction that ambitiously (and wrongly) we adopted at Maastricht; and that on this guideline recurred in the draft Constitution compiled under the guide of President Giscard d’Estaing (thereby creating yet another Foreign Minister beyond the twenty-five already existing). Perhaps if the commitment were to a convergence of policies to be achieved gradually, it could be honored.
However the suggestion of a composition of the Security Council hinging on the continents arose, all the more so after the launching of the African Union promoted by Colonel Ghadaffi. Its unrealizability immediately became clear, however, because of the impossible concentration, not only of Japan but of India and Indonesia also.
Most recently – and very close dates were set in the calendar – a suggestion for reform has been proposed by a consortium made up of four countries: Brazil, Germany, India and Japan.
The model sketched out aims to gain agreement; proposing, for example, the addition of two African seats on the Security Council with internal rotation among the African States themselves. I don’t know whether it is a checked fact or only out of hope that the four promoters claim to have gathered the necessary number of votes in the General Assembly, arranging even an extraordinary ad hoc session before the summer vacation.
It is not intelligent in my opinion – I repeat – to focus attention only on the Security Council; instead of checking, for example, on the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of the program for the third millennium.
I recall a very felicitous initiative taken at an extraordinary Session hinging on the problems of childhood. We were at the height of the Gulf War and, if on the one hand the UN could credit itself with that military operation, not repeating the usual litany of orders of the day of condemnation and of deploration wholly devoid of consequences (look at the great number of declarations on Palestine), a positive message of the mission of the UN itself still had to be sent to the world. The focus on the so many children who die of hunger and who lack medical help and school structures gave a highly persuasive profile. I recall that session with emotion. Given the alphabetical arrangement of countries I was sitting close to the Emir of Kuwait, who was there concentrating on the problem and setting aside for the moment those occurring in his country because of the ill-omened initiative of Saddam Hussein.
Certainly we need to get rid of the lack of concreteness in these international forums. When for example – it has happened already – the heads of State and government came together at FAO headquarters and made a commitment, precise and with due dates, to reduce hunger in the world, one might have expected it to be honored. The Inter-parliamentary Union was charged with monitoring, as they say, the progress, and held specific sessions to verify. Unfortunately the due dates have not been honored.
It seems more important to me to reflect on this and seek for remedies rather than providing fuel to susceptibility and grudges by a reform of the Security Council. That, obviously, is my personal thinking. And if, also through the action of our Foreign Office, they find acceptable solutions, I certainly won’t be sorry.
From one aspect the League of Nations achieved an important result: with the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. But unfortunately the Second World War was fought bilaterally no longer on battlefronts
Speaking of the UN, I cannot fail to
mention the bitterness felt up to the end of his life by President De Gasperi for
the closed doors of the UN toward defeated Italy. The United States proposed
Italian entry, regularly blocked by the Soviet veto. It should be said,
however, that the veto would have been neglected if in their turn the Americans
had given up their opposition to the entry of Romania and of at least one other
of the countries linked to Moscow.We were able to join the UN exactly fifty years ago; De Gasperi had died the previous year.
Can the UN account be considered in credit sixty years after its foundation? I would use the image of the glass half full and half empty. In the chronicles of the Assembly I remember the very profound speeches made by Paul VI and John Paul II.
It is, however, an account decidedly superior to that of the Genevan League of Nations conceived by President Wilson, which immediately suffered a deadly blow from lack of participation by the Americans (the Senate disavowed the President).
From one aspect the League of Nations achieved an important result: with the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. But unfortunately the Second World War was fought bilaterally no longer on battlefronts, but with the bombing of cities and the murder of millions of civilians. A new category of victim was created: mutilated children.
It is little thought about. It would seem there is a fear of describing it, as it was, State terrorism.
