How Security Council veto power politics has eroded UN’s credibility

Members of the Security Council vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on a ceasefire in Syria February 24, 2018 in New York. (AFP)
Members of the Security Council vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on a ceasefire in Syria February 24, 2018 in New York. (AFP)
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Updated 16 December 2024
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How Security Council veto power politics has eroded UN’s credibility

How Security Council veto power politics has eroded UN’s credibility
  • Structure with five permanent members seen as unsuitable by many in today’s multipolar world order
  • The UN’s paralysis over the Syria and Gaza conflicts has renewed debate about need for systemic reforms

LONDON: When the US vetoed another UN Security Council resolution in November calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, it sparked global outrage.

Critics said the US decision, which went against the 14 other Security Council members, would only prolong the suffering of civilians in the territory and exacerbate violence in the Middle East.

But it had another far-reaching impact that may come back to haunt Washington. The veto further undermined the credibility of the Security Council and sparked renewed calls for it to be restructured.




Inspired by the Oscar-nominated film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", three billboards circle the United Nations on February 22, 2018 for three hours to demand action on Syria in advance of a Security Council vote in New York. (AFP)

The organization, which is supposed to be the world’s premier body for maintaining international peace and security, has become paralyzed by the interests of its permanent members, hindering its ability to address global crises.

Founded in 1946, soon after the Second World War, the makeup of the Security Council has remained largely unchanged. The five permanent members, the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China, are allowed to use veto power to block resolutions even if they are outnumbered in votes.

It is now widely perceived as an ineffective relic of the post-war global order, that does not represent the interests of the world’s population and, most importantly, fails to help those suffering most amid the world’s conflicts.

INNUMBERS

• 45k+

Lives claimed by Israeli military operations against Palestinian militants in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.

• 26%

Share of world’s current population by five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

• 90%

Proportion of Gaza’s population displaced by the Israel-Hamas conflict.

• 8

UNSC resolutions related to Gaza war that have been vetoed by the US.

• 49

UNSC resolutions related to Israel vetoed by the US since 1970.

“What we’ve seen in Gaza is that the UN has become an increasingly politicized body, paralyzed by geopolitical rivalries,” Simon Mabon, director of the SEPAD Peace and Conflict Research Center at Lancaster University, told Arab News.




A man runs with the body of a child victim that was rescued from the rubble following Israeli bombardment on the four-storey Muqat family house in the Zarqa neighbourhood in the north of Gaza City on October 26, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

“This is not new. It has been a pattern since the UN was established. The UN Security Council’s structure, with veto power, allows its members to view decisions through the lens of their own strategic priorities, rather than a broader commitment to humanitarian ideals.”

The five permanent members with veto power reflect the recognition of the US and Soviet Union as the main victors of the Second World War, alongside the UK.

“The US pushed for China’s inclusion, while the UK advocated for France to create a European counterbalance to potential German or Soviet threats,” said Ephrem Kossaify, UN correspondent at Arab News.




Ambassador Robert Wood, Alternate Representative of the U.S. for Special Political Affairs in the UN, raises his hands to veto a draft resolution during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question at the UN headquarters on November 20, 2024 in New York City. (AFP)

“However, this structure has remained unchanged since then, leading to mounting calls for Security Council reforms to reflect the realities of today’s world order.”

The Security Council can impose binding decisions on all 193 member states to maintain peace. Its five permanent members, along with 10 rotating members elected by the General Assembly, assess security threats.

In recent years, competing interests among members have hindered effective responses to global crises like the war in Syria, COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and, most recently, the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The Security Council struggled with this almost as soon as it was formed. With the world entering the Cold War, the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union permeated through global hotspots.

As a result, very little got done. The Soviet Union applied 120 vetoes — far more than any other member — up until its dissolution in 1991. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, just 18 peacekeeping missions were authorized between 1948 and 1989.

Since 1991, by contrast, 48 peacekeeping missions have been approved by the Security Council.




A young Palestinian girl reacts in the courtyard of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after the bodies of victims were transported there, following an Israeli strike that hit a school-turned-shelter in the Al-Shati refugee camp on November 7, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas militant group. (AFP)

From 1970 onward, when it first used its veto power, the US became the primary permanent member to block Security Council votes, deploying the tactic at least 85 times. More than half of those vetoes were to stop resolutions related to Israel.

In recent years, Russia has also used its veto regularly, particularly with regard to the Syrian civil war, where it defended President Bashar Assad, and the Ukraine conflict.

Vetoes are a potent tool that often reflect national interests, alliances, and geopolitical strategies. For the US and Russia, the veto has been a key instrument to protect its strategic partners and advance its broader foreign policy goals.




Michael Lynk, Former UN human rights special rapporteur on Palestine

Another big argument for reform of the Security Council is that the world’s demographics have changed since 1946. At the time of its founding, the five permanent members accounted for more than half of the world’s population. Now they represent just 26 percent.

The body is therefore heavily skewed toward Europe and the West, discounting the growing populations, wealth, and influence of the emerging economies of Asia, Africa, and South America.

“The use of vetoes by the five permanent members on the Security Council is a relic of the end of the Second World War,” Michael Lynk, the former UN human rights special rapporteur on Palestine, told Arab News.

There is a global majority in support of Palestine.

Michael Lynk, Former UN human rights special rapporteur on Palestine

“It doesn’t reflect today’s power distribution or the extraordinary, large voice that the Global South has in the General Assembly.”

This imbalance has been laid bare by the Gaza conflict, which Lynk said has highlighted the deep global divide.




Palestinian civil defence members hand over to each other a child that was rescued following Israeli bombardment on the four-storey Muqat family house in the Zarqa neighbourhood in the north of Gaza City on October 26, 2024 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

“The Israeli war on Gaza exposes an extraordinary fault line between the Global North and the Global South,” he said. “Overwhelmingly, the Global South supports Palestine in UN votes, while the Global North abstains or opposes.

“There is a global majority in support of Palestine, but the power dynamics of the Global North, led by the US alliance with Israel, override that majority.”

In the case of Gaza, the US vetoed the ceasefire resolution on Nov. 20 in support of Israel, its key ally in the Middle East. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, it marked the 49th time the US has vetoed a Security Council resolution related to Israel.




Palestinians walk in a devastated neighbourhood due to Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on December 2, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Beyond diplomatic backing, the US provides Israel with approximately $3 billion annually in military aid.

But the veto risks alienating other key US allies in the Middle East and damaging Washington’s diplomatic standing, particularly with the Gulf Cooperation Council, which recently called for an end to Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

The resolution called for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the unconditional release of all hostages seized during the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and unrestricted humanitarian aid.




A Palestinian woman reacts as she stands amid the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli strike on the Shujaiyah neighbourhood in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on November 30, 2024, during the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas militant group. (AFP)

It aimed to address the humanitarian crisis by ensuring access to essential services like food, water and medical care. It would have forced Israel to stop restricting aid access to the territory, which has been pulverized by 14 months of military operations that have killed almost 45,000 Palestinians, including combatants.

In vetoing the resolution, the US argued that a ceasefire without preconditions could enable Hamas to regroup and continue to attack Israel. Robert Wood, the US deputy ambassador to the UN, criticized the resolution’s failure to explicitly link the ceasefire to the release of Israeli hostages.

“That is false,” said Lynk. The resolution, he added, did in fact link the ceasefire to the release of hostages, and even did so in the same paragraph. After using its veto, the US was accused of enabling Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Since the conflict began, the Security Council has voted on 12 resolutions. Of these, eight were vetoed — six by the US — and on four occasions America was the only permanent member to vote against.

“The pattern highlights the US’s role as a diplomatic shield for Israel,” said Lynk. “In practice, the US blocks resolutions critical of Israel or allows them to pass without ensuring their implementation.”

In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Qatar said the veto showed the need for reform of the Security Council.

The body’s failure to take decisive action on Gaza reflects the broader issues plaguing global governance. Even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres accepts this assessment.

In September he told Arab News: “We have no real power, let’s be honest. The body of the UN that has some power is the Security Council, and you know, the Security Council is paralyzed.”

Kossaify warned that such paralysis erodes public confidence in the UN.

“When the person in the street sees the Security Council unable to act in the most pressing situations that are threatening peace and security due to one member’s use of the prerogative, they lose faith in the entire organization,” he said.

Mabon of Lancaster University said the inability of the Security Council to press for a ceasefire showed that “strategic decisions are trumping humanitarian needs and interests, which I think is emblematic of the nature of global politics right now.

“This is a colossal failure of the global project, a colossal failure of world nations, and a stain on humanity.”

The international community’s response to Gaza highlights the growing consensus that reforms are needed in multilateral institutions like the UN.

In the years ahead, the effectiveness and legitimacy of the UN will continue to be debated, as the role of major powers in shaping global diplomacy is increasingly scrutinized.

Lynk suggests reforms that would allow the UN General Assembly to override a Security Council veto through a supermajority vote would introduce “democratic oversight to counter the P5’s stranglehold.”

The problem, of course, would be getting the permanent five members to consent to reforms that erode or remove their veto powers. “But reforms like this are worth fighting for,” said Lynk.

What is clear is that in today’s geopolitical landscape, the failure of the Security Council to protect lives in Gaza is likely to hasten moves towards overhauling the body that is meant to maintain international peace.

 


At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says

At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says
Updated 39 sec ago
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At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says

At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says
  • Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system

WASHINGTON: The head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves that he had identified over the years.
“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, said Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. “It’s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
Moustafa said that he is sure there are more mass graves than the five sites, and that along with Syrians victims included US and British citizens and other foreigners.
Reuters was unable to confirm Moustafa’s allegations.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.
Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.
Assad repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He assumed the role in January — while Assad was still in power — but told reporters last week that he was awaiting instructions from the new authorities and would “keep defending and working for the Syrian people.”
Moustafa arrived in Syria after Assad flew to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended his family’s more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule.
He spoke to Reuters after he was interviewed at the site in al Qutayfah by Britain’s Channel 4 News for a report on the alleged mass grave there.
He said the intelligence branch of the Syrian air force was “in charge of bodies going from military hospitals, where bodies were collected after they’d been tortured to death, to different intelligence branches, and then they would be sent to a mass grave location.”
Corpses also were transported to sites by the Damascus municipal funeral office whose personnel helped unload them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.
“We were able to talk to the people who worked on these mass graves that had on their own escaped Syria or that we helped to escape,” said Moustafa.
His group has spoken to bulldozer drivers compelled to dig graves and “many times on orders, squished the bodies down to fit them in and then cover them with dirt,” he said.
Moustafa expressed concern that graves sites were unsecured and said they needed to be preserved to safeguard evidence for investigations.

 


Syria’s Jolani says rebel factions to be ‘disbanded’, calls for lifting sanctions

Syria’s Jolani says rebel factions to be ‘disbanded’, calls for lifting sanctions
Updated 12 min 56 sec ago
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Syria’s Jolani says rebel factions to be ‘disbanded’, calls for lifting sanctions

Syria’s Jolani says rebel factions to be ‘disbanded’, calls for lifting sanctions
  • “Syria must remain united, and there must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice,” said Jolani

DAMASCUS: The leader of the Islamist group that toppled Bashar Assad said Monday that rebel factions in war-torn Syria would be “disbanded” and their fighters placed under the defense ministry, and called for sanctions to be lifted so refugees can return.
Syrian president Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day rebel offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group (HTS), whose fighters and allies swept down from northwest Syria and entered the capital on December 8.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said Monday on the group’s Telegram channel that all the rebel factions “would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defense ministry.”
“All will be subject to the law,” said Jolani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
He also emphasized the need for unity in a country home to different ethnic minority groups and religions, while speaking to members of the Druze community — a branch of Shiite Islam making up about 3 percent of Syria’s pre-war population.
“Syria must remain united,” he said. “There must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice.”
Several countries and organizations have welcomed Assad’s fall but said they were waiting to see how the new authorities would treat minorities in the country.
During a second meeting with a delegation of British diplomats, the HTS leader also spoke “of the importance of restoring relations” with London.
He stressed the need to end “all sanctions imposed on Syria so that Syrian refugees can return to their country,” according to remarks reported on his group’s Telegram channel.
HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and proscribed as a terrorist organization by many Western governments, though it has sought to moderate its rhetoric.
Since the toppling of Assad, it has insisted that the rights of all Syrians will be protected.
 

 


UN chief welcomes aid commitments by new Syrian authorities

UN chief welcomes aid commitments by new Syrian authorities
Updated 17 December 2024
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UN chief welcomes aid commitments by new Syrian authorities

UN chief welcomes aid commitments by new Syrian authorities
  • Guterres called on the international community to rally behind the Syrian people as they “seize the opportunity to build a better future”

UNITED NATIONS: United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher met with the commander of Syria’s new administration, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, and newly appointed Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Bashir on Monday to discuss scaling up humanitarian assistance in the country.
Following Fletcher’s meeting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he welcomed the caretaker government’s commitment to protect civilians, including humanitarian workers.
“I also welcome their agreement to grant full humanitarian access through all border crossings; cut through bureaucracy over permits and visas for humanitarian workers; ensure the continuity of essential government services, including health and education; and engage in genuine and practical dialogue with the wider humanitarian community,” Guterres said.
Syria’s Bashar Assad was ousted after insurgent forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham swept through Syria in a lightning offensive, ending more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule by his family.
Guterres called on the international community to rally behind the Syrian people as they “seize the opportunity to build a better future.” The United Nations says seven in 10 people in Syria continue to need humanitarian aid.
Fletcher also plans to visit Lebanon, Turkiye and Jordan, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols Editing by Bill Berkrot)

 


US strikes Houthi command and control facility in Yemen

US strikes Houthi command and control facility in Yemen
Updated 17 December 2024
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US strikes Houthi command and control facility in Yemen

US strikes Houthi command and control facility in Yemen
  • The Yemeni rebels say their attacks — a significant international security challenge that threatens a major shipping lane — are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza

WASHINGTON: American forces carried out an air strike on Monday against a Houthi command and control facility that was used by the Yemeni rebels to coordinate attacks, the US military said.
The Houthis began striking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, part of the region-wide fallout from Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, which militant groups in multiple countries have cited as justification for attacks.
“The targeted facility was a hub for coordinating Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.
“The strike reflects CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment to protect US and coalition personnel, regional partners, and international shipping,” it added.
The Yemeni rebels say their attacks — a significant international security challenge that threatens a major shipping lane — are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Anger over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the small coastal territory, which began after an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, has stoked violence involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The United States and other countries have deployed military vessels to help shield shipping from the Houthi strikes, and the rebels have periodically launched attacks targeting American military ships.
Washington’s forces have also carried out frequent air strikes on the Houthis in a bid to degrade their ability to target shipping and have sought to seize weapons before they reach the rebels, but their attacks have persisted.
 

 


US-brokered ceasefire fails between Kurdish and Turkiye-backed forces in Syria

US-brokered ceasefire fails between Kurdish and Turkiye-backed forces in Syria
Updated 17 December 2024
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US-brokered ceasefire fails between Kurdish and Turkiye-backed forces in Syria

US-brokered ceasefire fails between Kurdish and Turkiye-backed forces in Syria
  • Shami blamed the collapse of the mediation on “Turkiye’s approach in dealing with the mediation efforts and its evasion to accept key points”

CAIRO: Syrian US-backed Kurdish Syrian forces (SDF) said U.S-brokered mediation efforts failed to reach a permanent ceasefire with Syria’s Turkiye-backed rebels in the northern cities of Manbij and Kobani, according to head of the SDF’s media center Farhad Shami on Monday.
Shami blamed the collapse of the mediation on “Turkiye’s approach in dealing with the mediation efforts and its evasion to accept key points.”
The Turks are not happy about the ceasefire deal and Turkiye prefers to keep maximum pressure on SDF, a Syrian opposition source told Reuters.
Last week, the SDF said they reached a ceasefire agreement with the Turkiye-backed rebels in Manbij through US mediation “to ensure the safety and security of civilians.”