A few days ago, at the special session of the General Assembly on January 24 convened to commemorate the liberation of Nazi death camps, Kofi Annan said the United Nations must never forget that it was created as a response to the evil of Nazism, and that the horror of the Holocaust helped to shape its mission. The Secretary General also said that since the Holocaust, the world has, to its shame, failed more than once to prevent or halt genocide - for instance in Cambodia, in Rwanda, and in the former Yugoslavia.
Why the international community has failed?
The basic problem of the old international system is that it was designed to regulate relations between states. Whereas today, the main threats to international peace and security are rooted in situations within states. Hence, there is a tension between static structures and institutions on one hand and a dynamic evolution of international process on the other. Therefore, the UN must adapt its norms, principles and mechanisms to this new challenge. Otherwise its members may be increasingly forced to act outside its institutional framework. This in turn will lead to a marginalization of the UN and renationalization of security policies. Such scenario would be most unfortunate and undesirable. It is not an abstarct threat. Since many years a lot of the new security institutions emerged outside of the UN system (such as MTCR, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Wassenaar Arrangement, Zanger Committee, most recently – Security Proliferation Initiative and many others – not to mention the Group of Eight).
In addition, the UN Secretary-General’s Millennium report of 2000 defined some other most challenging problems of the contemporary world. Namely, that the negative impact of globalization combined with bad governance in many parts of the world has resulted in widespread poverty, hunger, malnutrition and rampant infectious diseases. The Secretary-General’s call for action to eradicate these scourges – including to reduce extreme poverty by half before 2015 – was recalled in the Millennium Declaration adopted by the General Assembly.
If the basic assumption stemming from these concepts is correct – that there is sometimes a right, or indeed responsibility, of the international community to intervene and protect people of its members – there is a need to define how and when it should be exercised, and under whose authority. The answer to these questions touches upon the very essence of the future role of the United Nations within the global security framework.
The crucial issue is not only what kind of reform is necessary for the UN, but also in what way and form it should be undertaken.
One possibility is to take an expedient course and pursue reforms on an ad hoc basis. Consequently, the irrelevant or redundant provisons of the UN Charter would not require amendment as long as they did not stand in the way of action.
Another possibility is to prepare a set of necessary amendments to the Charter – a minimum minimorum. They would concentrate on a change in the composition of the Security Council and the removal of the “dead” provisions. Such set of changes could be accompanied by a political statement specifying the conceptual and functional rationale for reforms.
And, as yet another possibility – a two step approach is conceivable. The first step would be the adoption of a politically binding document which could be called a New Political Act for the United Nations. It would spell out a new mission statement for the United Nations, the definition of new principle and concepts, new code of behaviour as well as containing political directives for the institutional reform, including the reform of the Security Council. The second step would consist in translating this new political consensus into a body of law as the amendment to the Charter.
The last two courses of action – minimum necessary changes to the Charter on the one hand, and the elaboration of a New Political Act on the other – are not mutually exclusive.
While the amendments to the Charter would effectively deal with the need to reform the Security Council, a New Political Act could further develop and codify such concepts as human security, responsibility to protect, the culture of prevention, good governance, solidarity, subsidiarity, and other forms of necessary responses, including the use of force as the last resort.
Some specific provisions of a possible New Political Act could be seen as following:
First, it should reaffirm the commitments to the principles and goals the Charter and the Millennium Declaration (the Act is not meant to replace the Charter).
Second, the Act should embody a new consensus – as called by the High Level Panel – on what international security means in today’s world. It should state that at the heart of any global collective security system for the twenty-first century, are equal sovereignty and human rights, but also democracy, good governance, solidarity, subsidiarity and other values and principles. A comprehensive concept of security should embrace freedom from fear of large-scale death or lessening of life chances, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as economic, social and environmental security. In other words, place human security at an equitable standing as state security.
Third, in order to effectively discharge its functions, the United Nations must have a clear and common understanding of contemporary threats and challenges to peace and security, and who they come from, including non-state actors. The New Political Act should refer to these issues.
Since the High Level Panel identified them comprehensively and correctly, there is no need for me to dwell too long upon this. Let me only stress what I alluded to earlier by mentioning that conflicts in today’s world originate primarily within states rather than between them: it is undisputable, that most significant threats to, and breaches of, international peace and security in recent years, rise from the weakening and collapse of state institutions, associated with abuse of human rights and fundamental freedoms, violation of rules of domestic and international law, bad governance, corruption and civil conflict. They also feed terrorism, transnational organized crime, and proliferation of weapons, including those of mass destruction.
Fourth, there should be no doubt that those and other threats are interrelated, not restricted by national boundaries and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as national levels. For this purpose, United Nations need to agree on a certain code of conduct governing their behaviour in this context. The code could include, among others, such principles like solidarity, responsibility, accountability and subsidiarity.
The principle of solidarity could be defined more broadly that it is in the Milennium Declaration. Member States should recognize that the principle of solidarity requires cooperative attitudes for States in need, including those plagued by terrorism, natural and man-made disasters and calamities and weak state structures. They should declare to act jointly in a spirit of solidarity and mobilise all the necessary instruments at their disposal to assist those in need. They should also recognize the leading role of the United Nations in coordination of effective and sustainable international assistance to the affected countries which would entail efforts in emergency relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Responsibility to protect goes hand in hand with the principle of accountability. While reaffirming that state sovereignty remains a fundamental principle of international law, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the United Nations should agree that the concept of responsible sovereignty includes not only State’s privileges, but also its obligations to protect human rights, rule of law, democracy and welfare of its own people as well as obligations toward other States. When a State is evidently unable or persistently unwilling to meet its responsibilities towards its own people and international community, the United Nations acting in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should be obliged to take action.
In the context of responsible sovereignty, accountability should apply to both action and inaction of States, their leaders as well as non-State actors, and should be fundamental to the upholding and strengthening democratic structures and international human rights order.
With respect to subsidiarity and burden-sharing, there is a clear need to establish a more effective partnership and division of responsibilities between the United Nations and regional organisations, on the basis of transparency. This should include enhanced cooperation and coordination among regional (and subregional) organizations themselves. The capacity of regional and subregional organizations should be enhanced through the provision of human, technical and financial assistance.
In order to work out mechanisms for a more effective global system of collective security, the United Nations should decide to convene an international conference, and for this conference to be preceded by regional meetings on the same subject. The conference should elaborate a framework agreement between the United Nations and regional organization(s) covering such issues as meetings of the heads of the organizations, exchange of information and early warning, co-training of civilian and military personnel, and exchange of personnel within peace operations.
Intervention: How and When?
I have been now and then refering to the work of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. In my opinion, the great majority of Panel’s recommendations address adequately the world’s most urging and longer term security problems. We hosted the panelists in May last year in Warsaw, to share with them our thinking on the reform of the UN. The panelist inspired us back with their own thoughts and recommendations.
Hence, like the Panelists, we endorse the emerging norm that there is a collective international responsibility to protect, exercisable by the Security Council authorizing military intervention as a last resort, in the event genocide and other large-scale killing, ethnic or racial cleansing or serious violations of international human rights law which sovereign Governments have proved powerless or unwilling to prevent. We also agree with the citeria of the use of force and the body to authorise the use – the Security Council – which the panelists presented. Like them, we do not see a reason to rewrite the Art. 51 of the UN Charter concerning self-defence. We would however invite a further reflection on what we understand under this Article, given today’s threats and challenges, and their sources. To consider that when faced with an imminent armed attack, when resorting to the use of force in exercising the right of self-defence, States must show that its necessity is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means nor time for deliberation, and that the threatened harm is otherwise unavoidable. The controlling criterion in this context is that of gravity (scale of the threat) and unavoidability.
Let me address for a while the question of institutional reform of the UN. We have always stressed the fact that institutions should follow the problems not the other way around. However, the necessity of some structural changes in the UN is obvious and I intend to touch upon some key recommendations of the Panel: reform of the Security Council, establishing Peacebuilding Commission and the reform of human rights mechanisms.
We agree that in view of the changes in the international community, enlargement of the Security Council is needed. It should be made more representative but not at the expense of the effectiveness and efficiency. With respect to the increase of the number of permanent seats, each continent should benefit from such expansion, and in particular those states whose international standing, policies and contributions to the UN system are exceptional. Here I have in mind such countries like Germany and Japan. With new benefits come, of course, also new responsibilities.
However, Poland is not in a position to fully accept either of the two alternatives of Council reform presented by the Panel. Both alternatives provide for merging the present regional groups of East and West Europe into a single European group. We are concerned at the reduction of the number of seats for European states in the enlarged Security Council – as envisaged in both alternatives presented by the Panel. It would be paradoxical, if at a time of a growing role of those states (including Central and Eastern Europe) in the implementation of United Nations goals, their position in the Security Council were to be diminished.
We support the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission which would have the task of identifying states in danger of collapse, providing assistance for them, as well as marshaling and sustaining the efforts of the international community in post-conflict peacebuilding. We believe that the Commission should be a compact body, but highly mobile and effective. The Commission could be composed of the permanent members of the SC and states selected by regional groups on a rotation basis. As a rule, the Commission should not include states that are non-permanent members of the SC. The Commission should not be a mirror reflection of the Security Council, but should offer a better and more efficient possibility for the division of tasks and functions between UN members. The basic line-up of the Commission should include: permanent members of the SC, states elected by regional groups to fixed terms, principal donor states, and representatives of regional organizations (including the European Union) and international financial institutions, i.e. the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Depending on the specific situation being addressed by the Commission, it could invite – on an ad hoc basis – representatives of the parties interested in the given case. I have in mind, for example, countries from the region, states that would be directly affected by the collapse of another state, and also states involved in the process of reconstruction.
We support reform of both the Commission on Human Rights and the whole UN system of protection and promotion of human rights. On the universal membership of the CHR, we have a flexible position on this issue. I realize that the reform of the CHR should be linked to changes in its membership rules. Everything indicates that universal membership will be the leading option, though we still believe that thorough consideration should be given to all the consequences of that solution. The long-term aim has to be an increase of the human rights rank to that of one of the three main pillars of the UN system. We are interested in the project to establish a Human Rights Council (several years ago, Polish experts examined a similar reform option).
Concluding Remarks
The call of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a debate among Member States on these and other issues has to be taken seriously. There is a solid ground to select and establish elements of a possible high-level document – A New Political Act for the 2005 UN summit. By presenting the draft of this document, we have an intention:
to forge new consensus on contemporary challenges and threats to international peace and security and on a more comprehensive concept of collective security;
to stress development as indispensable foundation of a new collective security;
to place human security in the centre of the collective security system along state security;
to define responses to these threats and challenges, including through inter alia:
reaffirmation of the values and objectives of the Millennium Declaration
recognition of the emergence of democracy as a universally accepted form of government and the crucial new organizing principle of conflict prevention
recognition that there is a collective international responsibility to protect;
agreement on the basic criteria of the legitimacy of the use of force and the right authority to intervene
establishing mechanisms for the identification of situations of potential instability, and for engagement with the states in question in order to prevent conflict.
The New Political Act could be adopted and preferably signed by Heads of State and Government at the planned 2005 summit.
There were 19 major armed conflicts in 18 locations throughout the world in 2003. The vast majority of them occured in Africa and Asia. Only two interstate conflicts (in Iraq and between Pakistan and India over Kashimir) were active in 2003. Almost all of conflicts in 14 zyear post-cold war period were waged within the states. (SIPRI Yearbook 2004).