UNGA Summit’s empty prestige

…also published in Daily Trust

The 73^rd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) summit is already underway at the organization’s headquarters in New York.

As the most important UN event in terms of the calibre of attendees i.e. the presidents, prime-ministers, kings, heads of government of member states and their respective entourages of ministers, advisers and other top government officials, the UNGA summit is obviously supposed to be the most influential UN event as well.

As an organization that supposedly believes in and, among other things, promotes democracy among nations, the UN is of course supposed to represent a perfect example of commitment to democratic principles in all its institutions and councils where all member states should enjoy equal rights of participation in its policy and resolution-formulation processes, regardless of their respective levels of economic development and military strength. 
 

However, this isn’t and has never been the case either. The General Assembly of the global organization, which is solely composed of leaders of its member states hence should operate as the highest decision-making body of the organization, is largely a mere ceremonial body with no jurisdiction to take any decisive resolution on global security situation. It can only approve the organization’s annual budget, make recommendations and issue some non-binding resolutions that have no effect on reality whatsoever.

The organization is instead structured in such a way that decisive resolutions affecting the entire world can only be taken by the self-appointed five-member United Nations Security Council i.e. the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, which are the permanent members of the Council.

Incidentally, though ten others non-permanent member states serve in the Council for a 2-year period, yet their presence is effectively never different from their absence, because they have no power whatsoever to influence the Council resolutions. They are in fact mere glorified observers kept therein to give the Council a semblance of credibility.

Anyway, with each permanent Security Council member state primarily motivated by its selfish interests and driven by its self-centered ambitions in the process of formulating strategic global security policies, it, by hook or by crook, seeks to influence the Council’s resolution notwithstanding their repercussions on other countries or even the rest of the world for that matter.

To achieve so, it manipulates circumstances to its maximum advantage leveraging its influence on the global stage to get its way. It compromises on a matter only when appropriately compensated on another, which explains why each permanent member state can veto any draft resolution no matter how fair or beneficial it’s simply because it doesn’t serve its selfish interests, or because the compensation offered her in return doesn’t serve its imperialistic ambitions.

The United States, Russian and China are particularly notorious in this regard. For instance, since the confiscation of Palestinian territory by the Zionists and their subsequent creation of the State of Israel on it in1948, the United States has always vetoed promising Security Council draft resolutions that would have at least led to the creation of an independent and viable State of Palestine on the territories earmarked for that purpose by the Security Council itself since 1993 under Oslo Accords, even though the size of the territories that the Palestinians were compelled to settle for is  less than a quarter of the size of their confiscated territories. 

        

Likewise, Russia and China have equally vetoed Security Council draft resolutions that would have ended Bashar Al-Assad’s brutal mass killing campaign against Syrians. Yet, the notoriety of the United States in this regard is particularly huge for it has on various occasions arrogantly defied the Security Council itself and gone ahead to follow through with its agenda thereby massively undermining the global security.

Nevertheless, despite their apparent differences, the five permanent Security Council member states share a lot in common; in fact, their common interests outweigh their respective bilateral and multilateral interests with most of, if not all, the countries on the receiving end of the Council’s actions and inactions. For instance, their unanimous resistance against any recommendation to enlarge the Council or reform the United Nations to give all member states equal rights and make it operate transparently is obviously intended to perpetually keep the global security situation at their mercy.

The annual UNGA summit’s purported prestige is therefore absolutely empty. Yet, it has been systematically further bastardized over the decades so much that it has been effectively reduced to a mere event where the attendees show up to outclass one another in showing off of things like luxury jets, size of entourage, grandeur of motorcade etc.

Besides, even its proceedings never reflect its supposed importance. For instance, often, it’s the level of a country’s amount of influence on the global stage that determines the size and calibre of the audience that would remain or show up in the hall to listen to its president’s remarks. That’s why while some leaders attract huge audience; others deliver their remarks to an almost empty hall. Apart from the UN staff, his entourage and family members, a typical leader of a developing country attracts a ridiculously small audience that hardly, if at all, includes a leader of a country.