An analysis of United Nations Security Council resolutions: are all countries treated equally?

• Author: Gruenberg, Justin S.

This Note argues that the Security Council fails to treat all Members of the United Nations equally, specifically singling out Israel, and to a lesser extent South Africa, for disparate treatment during the Cold War period. After introducing the Security Council, the Note creates a hierarchical classification system of wording in Security Council resolutions, specifically of emotive and instructive wording. Once the system is explained, the Note analyzes the words used in each Security Council resolution and cross-references those words with the Entity being discussed. To do this, the Note focuses on nine specific areas in which the disparate treatment among Members is evident, particularly with regards to Israel. The Note concludes by stressing the importance of correcting the underlying endemic flaws in the United Nations system rather than trying to patch problems with artificial devices, such as the Negroponte Doctrine. Only by ridding the Security Council of its biases can it serve the purpose it was created to fulfill.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. METHODOLOGY OF THIS STUDY III. THE SECURITY COUNCIL A. Background B. Regional Groups C. Resolutions IV. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION WORDING A. Emotive Wording B. Instructive Wording C. Modifiers V. THE SECURITY COUNCIL'S DISPARATE TREATMENT OF ENTITIES A. Two Distinct Time Periods B. Entity-Specific Word Choices 1. The Hebron massacre v. the Park Hotel bombing 2. Precise numbers and civilians 3. Black September, al-Anfal, and the West Bank 4. South Africa: The other pariah state 5. Warnings: The domain of Israel and South Africa 6. Censure: Reserved for Israel 7. Deplored: Israel more than every other country combined 8. Shocked: A comparison of assassinations 9. Confidence Building Measures: Not in the Middle East C. The Negroponte Doctrine VI. CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

The United Nations Security Council, created as a bastion of hope and international cooperation to contain and resolve threats to international peace and security around the world, has evolved into a political body whose resolutions are used to threaten and inequitably treat its Member countries. The unequal treatment strikes at the very core of the United Nations' purpose and trivializes the value of international cooperation. Specifically, Israel--and to a lesser extent South Africa--has been uniquely and excessively singled out for admonishment by the Security Council, especially when comparing incidents with those committed by other countries.

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To understand the importance of the Security Council and the role it plays in the United Nations, it is necessary to examine the purpose the United Nations was created to serve and how the Security Council fails to uphold the ideals and objectives of its founders and Member countries. On June 26, 1945, fifty-one countries met in San Francisco, California and signed the United Nations Charter. (1) Following the victory over the Axis Powers in World War II, the victorious alliance of countries sought to maintain the cooperation that had proven so valuable in World War II. (2) The victors resolved to maintain the alliance and create the United Nations organization. (3) Collectively they declared, "[w]e the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined ... to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, [and] in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small...." (4) To emphasize its purpose, the Charter continues, "It]he Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." (5) In layman's terms, the United Nations aspired to treat every country and its people equally.

The founding countries were filled with excitement at the thought of an international organization that would support their interests.(6) The United Nations was created as "humankind's best hope for an enduring peace" and "promised a cooperative grouping of nations." (7) In the absence of a worldwide government, (8) treaties provide the best method for diminishing conflicts between countries. (9) Its founders believed the United Nations Charter was such a treaty. (10)

Unfortunately, since its creation, the United Nations has not lived up to the lofty visions of its founders nor to the expectations of those that joined after its creation. The practices of the organization are often contradictory to the principles espoused by the Charter. The founding states of the United Nations called for "the principle of equal rights" for all its Members, (11) but that principle has been ignored. Instead, Members of the United Nations generally place politics above their goal of preventing conflicts. Each body of the United Nations has flaws that are consistently exploited by powerful Members or blocs in order to discriminate against other countries. In the Security Council, the manipulated flaw is manifest in the ability of each of the five Permanent Members to veto any resolution it does not agree with. (12) This provides blanket immunity in the Security Council to each of these countries and any close ally that country wishes to protect.

Conversely, in the General Assembly where every country has an equal vote and no country is capable of vetoing any proposal, groups of countries often band together as "blocs" to vote in predetermined ways so as to strongly influence each vote. (13) It is mathematically possible for a resolution in the General Assembly to be passed with a two-thirds vote by countries that make up less that 15 percent of the world's population. (14) Due to the heavy influences imposed by large blocs, General Assembly resolutions can single out specific countries excessively. (15) Figure 1 shows the General Assembly's fixation on resolutions regarding countries in the Middle East. (16) The General Assembly's fixation on Israel and the Middle East conflict has many possible explanations, including the United States' consistent protection of Israel in the Security Council, (17) an automatic majority in the General Assembly composed of Israel's enemies, (18) or just a general bias against Israel. (19)

Regrettably, this anti-Israel bias is not confined to the General Assembly; it is endemic throughout the United Nations. This disheartening conclusion was volunteered by the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his opening address to the sixty-first session of the General Assembly. Annan admitted, "supporters of Israel feel that it is harshly judged, by standards that are not applied to its enemies--and too often this is true, particularly in some UN bodies." (20) The United Nations' failure to treat all of its Members equally, the very precept the international organization was founded upon, is consistently demonstrated by its treatment of Israel. (21) This Note explores the depths of that disparate treatment.

Section II of this Note describes the methodology used to compile the data presented here. This section explains which types of statistics were recorded and how the data were chosen.

Section III introduces the Security Council. This section begins by describing the structure, methods, and purposes of the Council. It continues by introducing the role regional groups play in the Security Council and how Israel's exclusion from the regional group structure violates the United Nations Charter. The section concludes with an explanation of Security Council resolutions.

Section IV presents a hierarchical classification system of the words used in Security Council resolutions. This section explains the ranking of emotive words, instructive words, and modifying words through examples, definitions, and their placement in resolutions.

Finally, section V analyzes Security Council resolution wording based on the classification system created in Section IV. This section begins by distinguishing between resolutions of the Cold War era, in which the Security Council excessively focused on Israel and South Africa, and the resolutions of the post-Cold War era. It continues by comparing the words used in Israel-centric resolutions with resolutions about other Middle Eastern Entities when both countries engaged in similar behaviors. This section then explores the Security Council's focus on South Africa's apartheid regime. It concludes with a brief discussion of the Negroponte Doctrine, how it has affected the balance of the wording used in Security Council resolutions, and future implications.

2. METHODOLOGY OF THIS STUDY

   Since its inception, the Security Council has debated thousands of issues--referred to here as "Subjects"--and has published almost eighteen hundred resolutions. (22) Certain Subjects have inspired hundreds of resolutions, (23) while other comparably important Subjects have inspired very few or no resolutions. (24) This Note focuses on the words used by the United Nations Security Council in resolutions that pertain to each Subject it has addressed. I compared the wording used by the Security Council in resolutions that were directed toward different Entities when the Subjects were similar. Since the Subject of a resolution does not always relate to the actions of a country--sometimes, instead of a country, the Council addresses a non-state actor--this Note refers to the target of the each Security Council resolution as an "Entity." I also compared factually similar Subjects regarding different Entities when only one of the Subjects produced a Security Council resolution. (25)

   I analyzed every Security Council resolution and recorded statistics in three areas: (1) the wording used; (2) the details employed; and (3) the frequency of the resolutions. Since the Security Council has considered hundreds of Subjects over the last sixty-three years, I focused on the Subjects discussed in this Note for one or more of the following reasons: (A) the Security Council spent a large amount of its time considering the Subject; (B) the Security Council...