Originally published on the CGS blog on October 24, 2013.
It’s United Nations Day! Sixty-eight years ago, the U.N.’s charter came into being “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war… to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights… and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
But this is not just a day to celebrate what the U.N. has accomplished. It is also a time to recommit to working for a U.N. that can actually accomplish its visionary goals.
What if you could help to prevent the next Rwanda, Darfur or Syria? Would you? GlobalSolutions.org is pushing for the P5 – the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China – to agree not use their veto in the Security Council when dealing with genocide and other mass atrocities. It has happened too often:
- In 1994, while the savage genocide in Rwanda raged, France, Great Britain and the U.S. used their power to prevent the deployment of a reinforced peacekeeping operation in the first few weeks after the killing began. Over 800,000 lost their lives.
- From 2003 to 2006, at the height of the killing in Darfur, Sudan, China and Russia threatened to veto any Security Council decision to authorize military force, or even serious economic sanctions. More than 300,000 died and the killing still continues.
- Since 2011, Russia and China have vetoed three separate resolutions to stop the killing in Syria. Russia even blocked statements expressing concern over the lives lost and the use of chemical weapons. Close to 115,000 Syrians have been slaughtered – with no end to the fighting in sight.
This is a serious proposal. France’s minister of foreign affairs, Laurent Fabius, in the New York Times just called for the P5 to “voluntarily regulate their right to exercise their veto.” Bill Clinton’s Secretaries of State and Defense, Madeline Albright and William Cohen, support limiting the veto, as has U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and his predecessor Kofi Annan.
However, right now GlobalSolutions.org is the only U.S.-based organization focused on this important proposal.
We are calling this the “Responsibility Not to Veto.” Why? In 2005, all U.N. member states agreed they have a responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, major war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. If P5 members use or threaten to use the veto power to protect the leaders of their client states who are perpetrating these crimes, they are not fulfilling this responsibility.
In a speech before the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama said, “sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter… should we really accept the notion that the world is powerless in the face of a Rwanda or Srebrenica?”
However, the fact is that until we rein in the veto, the Security Council the world needs is not the Security Council we have.
This United Nations day, please join with me and support the vision of the U.N.’s founders. Let us work together and take a bold step towards a world where we have truly tamed the scourge of war.
