Main E-mail: vijay@anglo-sphere.com

The upcoming 60^th anniversary of the UN coincides with a world situation where it is needed more then ever, yet its impact is limited by its own constitution, and it is ignored by the world’s most militarily and politically important nation states. The future of the UN is very much in the news particularly at a time when there is controversy over the legitimacy of the war on Iraq. The UN has achieved a great deal, but also been unsuccessful from time to time.

The murder in Baghdad of much admired Sergio Vieira de Mello the new United Nations high commissioner for human rights was one of those atrocities that will sting the memory for years to come.

Like the murder of Count Folke Bernadotte in Palestine in 1948, or the mysterious air crash that killed Dag Hammarskold on his mission to the Congo in 1961, it is a reminder that the UN’s greatest leaders are not smooth bureaucrats in beautiful suits but brave and resourceful men who carry our hopes and take risks in our name.

In its horrible way the truck bomb that massacred Vieira de Mello and two dozen UN colleagues and Iraqis is also a reminder that the UN is not a futile talking shop but an essential if imperfect defence against anarchy and terrorism. The UN has and always has had serious enemies who fear that they will lose if the UN mission succeeds.

The rhetoric of the neoconservatives has done its best to convince us that "the looming chatterbox on the East River" is too ineffective to be worth hating. We are constantly being told by Richard Perle and others that the UN may be going the way of League of Nations. During the fractious UN debates President George W. Bush claimed that the UN "risked fading into history as an effective, irrelevant debating society.

The truck bomb in Baghdad must surely demolish this crude and partial caricature. It is, after all, the UN that has maintained sanctions on Iraq for 12 years. It was under a UN mandate that American and British aircraft patrolled the skies in the no-fly zones and allowed the Kurds to rebuild their lives after the programs of Chemical Ali. And now the Americans are trying to persuade the UN to stretch beyond its humanitarian role in Iraq and authorise other countries to send troops.

The failure to agree a UN mandate for the war was poisonous debacle which left bruised egos all round. Neo-conservatives suffer from the illusion that the UN is somehow intrinsically hostile to the West. If we get sucked into its labyrinthine procedures, we shall be emasculated and find ourselves unable to protect ourselves, let alone our friends. These corrupt dictatorships are brimming with post-colonial resentment and will always hamstring our best efforts to punish nations that violate the UN charter for fear that they themselves may be next on the hit list.

But in practice the structure of the Security Council and the weight of International Community ensure that the UN usually does more or less what we wanted it to do. There are terrible failures. Rwanda was the worst in living memory. But you cannot load all the blame on the UN for what was a ghastly lapse of moral energy by the leading nations of the free world, not lest American and British.

In dealing with UN, the Americans in particular seem to suffer from a kind of imperial paranoia. American troops must always be under American commanders and must not be subject to any international war crimes tribunal. The Bush people are especially prickly on such points. They think that unilateral military actions are the solution to all the problems of the world. UN and the left, they think are misguided and ineffective. What Bush Government fails to understand is that the voice of the UN and civil society are as powerful as any superpower and actions without proper UN mandate and voice of the people are illegal and immoral?

We at Action for UN Renewal believe that the charter of the UN needs revision to take into account higher priority to be accorded to human rights and large scale Security Council reforms including right geographical mix of its members. We also believe that this does not automatically give right to a single or coalition of most powerful countries in the world to take military action or pursue their agenda relentlessly. For instance staging war on Iraq even when they failed to find any evidence of nuclear, biological, chemical weapons or any long-range missiles was a flagrant abuse of International Law and disregard of UN.

For the left, the UN is the unique, legitimate source of authority whose judgements, demands and embargoes glow with a sacred aura. For the neo-conservatives the UN is a devil’s cauldron which must be avoided as far as possible.

The UN is deeply fallible, sometimes corrupt, always short of cash, but also full of genuinely good intentions, unavoidable, indispensable, at least for the inhabitants of Bosnia, Liberia, Cyprus, Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Rwanda, East Timor and Kashmir where peacekeepers are doing excellent job for number of years.

After the recent Tuesdays 19^th of August truck bomb in Baghdad, the UN mission is resolute to stay in Iraq and carry on peace keeping and reconstruction work till the Iraqis can govern themselves. It is the only body with presence in other countries which is capable of providing peace and stability. It deserves our support and appreciation. We must "Save the UN, it is the only world body we have".

I like to close this talk with a dream which comes from – Page 58, The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living: My Testament to Life, Volume 1:

I dream that all governments will join their minds and hearts
to manage this beautiful Earth and its precious humanity
in peace, justice and happiness,
That all religions will join
in a global spirituality,
That all people will become
a caring family,
That all scientists will join
in a united, ethical science,
That all corporations will unite
in a global cooperative
to preserve nature and all humanity.
I believe that once and for ever,
we will eliminate all wars,
violence and armaments
from this miraculous planet.
I dream that the incredible and
growing distance between rich and poor,
between and inside nations
will be eliminated as a blemish
to the miracle of life.
I dream that we will stop the destruction
of our miraculous, so richly endowed planetary home.
I dream that we will eliminate all lies, corruption and
immoral advertisements
for purely monetary purposes.
I dream that we will all live
simple, frugal lives in order
not to waste unduly the precious
resources of our planet.
I dream that each decade and centennial
will be celebrated as a great
world wide thanksgiving for our successes.
I dream that we will succeed in making our planet
the ultimate success of God,
of the mysterious forces of the
universe of which each of us
is a miraculous, cosmic unit.
I dream that the United Nations will
declare a yearly World Thanksgiving Day
Dear brothers and sisters,
dear children, youth, adults and elderly,
dear spirits of all the departed
let us join forces in fulfilling
God's loving destiny intended
for all of humanity.

Vijay Mehta MA 

Vice-Chairman: Action for United Nations Renewal