Touching our Daily Lives....
Author | Thakur, Ramesh |
Position | Ability of the UN and world community to achieve sustainable disarmament - Column |
THE WORLD COMMUNITY MUST MATCH THE DEMANDS MADE WITH THE MEANS GIVEN
International organizations touch our daily lives in myriad ways. They are an important means of arranging the functioning of the state-based international system more satisfactorily than had proven to be the case in conditions of international anarchy. The United Nations lies at their legislative and normative centre. If it did not exist, we would surely have to invent it. Considering the illfated history of the League of Nations, the United Nations founders would have felt pride and satisfaction that their creation is still intact at the dawn of the new millennium, embracing virtually the entire international community. Yet, their vision of a world community equal in rights and united in action is still to be realized.
For romantics, the United Nations can do no wrong and is the solution to all the world's problems. Its failures are seen as being really the failures of Member States. If only they had the necessary political will, the Organization would fulfil its destiny as the global commons, the custodian of the international interest and the conscience of all humanity.
Cynics question the respect paid to the United Nations by the credulous. For them, it exists so that nations, unable to do anything individually, can get together to decide that nothing can be done collectively. The price of inaction on a grand scale is paid by the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and others.
In the midst of the swirling tides of change, the United Nations must strive for a balance between the desirable and the possible. The UN Charter was a triumph of hope and idealism over the experience of two world wars. The flame flickered in the chili winds of the cold war. But it has not yet died out. The Organization's greatest strength is that it is the only universal forum for cooperation and management. The global public goods of peace, prosperity, sustainable development and good governance cannot be achieved by any country acting on its own. The United Nations is still the symbol of our hopes and dreams for a better world where weakness can be compensated for by justice and fairness, and the law of the jungle replaced by the rule of law.
The United Nations presided over decolonization--one of the great achievements of this century. The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights is both the embodiment and proclamation of the human rights norm. The 1966 Covenants added force and...
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