Showing Two Fingers to the Useless UNSC

The ongoing humiliation and destruction of Ukraine by one of the P-5 members, brings the fallacy of the UN and the UNSC to the fore. The unabated pounding of a member nation by another member, mightier though, has thrown the world-peace into disarray. It pains the humanity that smaller and weaker nations around the world are repeatedly being crushed by the stronger military powers and that the UNSC or UNGA is unable to come to their rescue and support. The helplessness of the UN/UNSC in the present Russian offensive in Ukraine is the most glaring one and defies all logic. Powers given to the P-5 at the UNSC seems to be most appalling than ever before, showing two fingers.

It is ghastly that the world community watches mutely while the mightier nations inflict immense injuries and wounds on to the weak. In the current unilateral war on Ukraine, innocent people are falling prey to somewhat unmatched deaths and devastation by Russia for no logical reason. All attempts to enforce a Cease-Fire through the Security Council have failed repeatedly and Russia has been left untamed to crush and destroy an erstwhile peace-loving Ukraine. There are immense losses of lives, livelihood, livestock, hard-earned properties and the infrastructures. Cities after cities are getting ruined…be it Kharkieve, Chernihive, Sumi, Mariapul, Kherson and so on.

It is the right of any nation to choose who it should ally with. If Ukraine wants to join NATO, so it be. If NATO has broken the unwritten self-assertion of not extending eastward after the break of the USSR, it is NATO-Russian problem. There is no doubt that NATO has been threatening Russia esp on its western flank. Russia has already permitted NATO to flank it through Estonia and Latvia in the past. So what brings it to wars if another country, Ukraine, joins NATO? It is hard to understand. It is another matter that Ukraine has been in the wrong books of Russia since 2008 by committing atrocities against the Russian Speaking Ukrainians of Crimea and Donbas region. They treat them as traitors, derecognizing Russian as official language, stopping their social security and literally making them a refugee in own land, by own govt. Russia has been to their aid since then. The majority of the inhabitants of these provinces owe allegiance to Russia, own Russian passport. If a referendum was held before the outbreak of the current war, they would have chosen Russia. However, after the outbreak of the war and 3 months into it, it is a different story. If we can believe western media reports, today every Ukrainian bearing Russian allegiance or otherwise, seems to be devastated and appalled by Russian attacks turning their cities and hamlets to ruins.

There is no doubt that Russia is to be blamed for the unilateral offensive but what about the Ukrainian President Zelensky??? He put his innocent citizen to perils by asking them to pick-up weapons against the Russian troops right on the second day of break-out of the so-called Special Russian Military Operations. Hereafter, the civilians fired from their homes, windows, doors and roof-tops at the Russian troops who got a legitimate excuse to fire back at those residential buildings, putting them to the ruins. Zelensky further asked their military to shift their Radars and Air Defence Units within the residential layouts that attracted Russian anti-radiation missiles with unprecedented devastations. These wrong decisions of Ukrainian President have ‘liberated’ Russian President Putin from any war crime. This is the reason, residential complexes of city after cities are being attacked in ‘retaliation’…and look at the apathy of the world bodies, be it the UN, the UNSC, the UNHRC, the leagues of nations or individual nations… all watching these mutely with their consciences corroded/killed. Every nation of the world whether member of the UN or not, have a legitimate right to question the being of the UNSC. Why do we have such defunct organization that cannot come to the aid of weaker member nations? We witnessed it earlier happening in several nations as mentioned below. The mightier or a group of mightier nations indulging in similar misadventure inside a weaker State on some of the other pretexts. Earlier too, we watched mutely all these happening. The P-5 did not allow a UNSC sponsored ‘Cease-fire’ while the weaker nations were being decimated as enumerated below:-

Azerbaijan inflicted a similar injury on the innocent civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh;

• Talibani terrorists grabbing power, committing genocide in Afghanistan,
• Israeli attacks on Gaza strip, West Bank and Palestine.
• Ethiopia committed genocide of the Tigray people.
• Saudi attacks on Yemen causing genocide and the worst famine.
• Islamists & Jihadists inflicting intense pain on Nigerian and adjoining women.
• UK-Germany-France-US-Russia raised Syria to dust causing humanitarian crisis.
• US-led NATO invaded Iraq on the fake pretext of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
• NATO-led allied forces committed genocides of the Iraqi people.
• US-led allied forces invaded Afghanistan and committed genocide.
• US committing several genocides in past and not held accountable.
• China committing serious Human Rights crimes in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
• China invaded Tibet and part of Turkmenistan, Mongolia and smaller states.
• Genocide of Tutsis; or of religious minorities in Islamic nations

The lists of invasions and war crimes are endless where UNSC failed to protect the weak. When such atrocities take place, it is the responsibility of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to first stop any continuation of war by stopping the stronger nation from indulgence and ensuring an effective Cease-Fire. It must be the first and foremost objective of the UNSC to stop any war between the member nations and start the process of dialogue. This is not happening today…or may be all instances enumerated above where one or the other P-5 nations have ‘Vetoed’ the proposal and thus the annihilation of the weak continued. This is why Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq etc are in the ruins. Clearly, UNSC in their objectives have failed repeatedly and deserves to be dissolved. As such UNSC representation is highly flawed and several proposals for reformation have been gathering dusts for decades (read ‘A Toothless Organization called UNSC’ https://articles.thecounterviews.com/articles/toothless-organisation-unsc-human-rights/).

Reformation of the UNSC has been long overdue. Representation of the world population has been flawed. There are several nations in it which has only a handful population whereas nations with large population do not find place in it. UNSC in the current form does not meet the aspirations of the world community. This could be the best time to dissolve and form it with new mandates and rights. United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) must assume some extra-ordinary powers to enforce ‘Cease-fire’ in situations like these or else strip-off the Veto rights of the indulgent P-5.

Although accountability for starting war and deaths/atrocities of innocent people can be fixed only after a proper fact-finding and investigations, a cease-fire must not wait for it. Saving the lives of the civilians and protecting the smaller & weaker member States from being decimated should be the first priority of the UNSC and that is where it has been failing time and again. The UNGA/UNSC must come to the defence of the defenseless now and hereafter. The credibility of the UN and UNSC is at a very high stake now than ever before. The UNSC has failed the world and urgently needs to be reformed or dissolved lest all mightier nations will continue showing two fingers.