Omar Barghouti quite is right to highlight the dysfunctional nature of the UN (The UN has failed us on Gaza. We need to decolonize and radically reform it, 25 November). Indeed, as currently constituted it cannot be otherwise, given the glaring conceptual contradiction at its very heart: the democratic nature of the general assembly is fatally vitiated by the veto system at the security council. For a veto (Latin for “I forbid”) is the classic tool of tyrants, and at the UN it allows any of its five permanent members – the heirs of the victorious allies of the second world war – to unilaterally suppress any democratic decision that goes against what they consider to be their interests.
And, for the most part, these interests remain those of a world that is the product of another age – the age of empire. That was the price of the UN’s formation – a US delegate at the 1945 San Francisco conference dramatically tore up a copy of the draft charter to emphasise that without agreement on the veto, there would be no UN. But we no longer live in that world – or at least, not in a world where such interests are still seen as the natural spoils of victory.
Accountability is the name of the game, and the west cannot in good conscience continue to press for democracy when it denies it at the core of the global system. Like it or not, a functional UN is both a logical and necessary forum for resolving conflict when nuclear weapons mean that such issues can no longer be settled by force: as the horrors we are witnessing in Ukraine and Gaza powerfully demonstrate, the UN needs to be able to do what it was intended to do – maintain international peace and security. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of its founding. We should summon the courage to reform it.
Simon Prentis
London
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