Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Let’s Not Write Off The UN As A System Just Yet

South Korean activists attend a rally against Russia attacks Ukraine near the Russian embassy on February 28, 2022 in Seoul, South Korea.

New Delhi: The horrifying visuals coming from Ukraine have made us all saddened and left us in despair. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has raised two questions in the mind of the common man — have we become worse than our ancestors? And, has the United Nations as a system and international organisation failed? 

We need to find an answer as these two questions concern our past, present and future.  

Has Human Civilisation Failed?

Social media is abuzz with users arguing that humanity has become worse than what it used to be. I disagree. 

Human civilisation has evolved so much that our parameters of evolution or expectations from that have skyrocketed. 

Let’s take casualties in armed conflict — combatants, and civilians — as a parameter to determine if human civilisation has become more violent or has violence receded significantly. 

In order to understand the reduction or growth of violence, i.e. armed conflict, let’s divide the time zone as casualties during World War II and all battle-related conflicts involving states or at least one state post World War II international legal order. 

First thing first, the majority of the action took place in Europe. Having said that, in 1945, an estimated 35 million to 60 million (5 to 6 crore) deaths occurred across the world. Europe alone suffered casualties of 15 to 20 million. 

According to Britannica, between 1939 and 1945, at least 60 million European civilians were displaced from their home; and 27 million civilians were dislodged from their own countries. The erstwhile USSR suffered as many as 27 million deaths, including civilian deaths — highest casualties in WWII by some estimates.

Now, let us examine the casualties post World War II or 1946. The ‘Uppsala Conflict Data Program Data’ till 2020 suggests that there were 56 active conflicts in 2020. The total number of casualties in 2021 was under 50,000. Afghanistan was the deadliest conflict zone, which contributed 40 per cent of the total armed conflict-related casualties in 2020.

The data clearly shows a reduction in the number of casualties and major armed conflicts between two or more states. Since 1946, the total number of casualties related to armed conflict had not crossed the mark of 1.5 million until 2021. 

Accordingly, the Uppsala University report says: “The absolute number of war deaths has been declining since 1946. In some years in the early post-war era, around half a million people died through direct violence in wars; in contrast, in 2016 the number of all battle-related deaths in conflicts involving at least one state was 87,432.”

Thus, the declining number of wars and growing authority of human rights show we as humans are moving in the right direction. Aberrations should now demean our overall achievement as humanity in elevating the cause of human beings. 

Has The UN Failed?

Absolutely not. The UN as an international system functions through its main organs of General Assembly, Security Council (SC), Secretariat, Economic and Social Council, and International Court of Justice. The contribution of these bodies in the growth of international legal jurisprudence cannot be undermined. 

We must not lose sight of the fact that in the twentieth century there were only one or two international organisations. Rule-making international organisations were hard to conceptualise, leave aside creating them. Various organs of the UN have contributed immensely in creating the system and order of international human rights.  

Can we take down the efforts of UNESCO, or UNHCR, or international documents like UNFCCC (Climate Change Convention), Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties? Various international law tribunals such as ITLOS (tribunal for law of sea) etc are contributions of the UN. 

The UN has trade-related bodies, such as UNCITRAL whose contribution to international trade and commerce is unparalleled.

The UNSC appears to have failed because it was structurally designed to fail. At its very birth, we witnessed the Korean Crisis that crippled the functioning of the council because of conflict interests of its permanent members. 

The UNSC has been designed in such a way that any resolution can only be passed by it, on a substantive matter, if it gets nine affirmative votes out of a total of fifteen. Of these nine affirmative votes, all the permanent members must vote affirmatively. If they don’t, the resolution would fail. 

According to Article 27 of the UN charter, a resolution must be passed by a majority of the nine members, and if the matter is substantive, this nine-member formula must be reached by P5 (Permanent five members) + any four members. 

So, say 14 out of the 15 members want the resolution to be passed, but one member does not. In that case, if the member resisting the resolution is not a permanent member, it would see the light of the day. But the resolution will fall if that member happens to be a permanent member — what happened in the Russia-Ukraine matter last week, as permanent member Russia used its veto power and the UNSC resolution condemning the invasion failed. 

The Cold War ensured that Article 27 became a wrestling ground between the USA and the USSR. As a consequence, the UNSC was paralysed. It is not the council that is a mistake, but the architecture of the UN that is. Moreover, there were certain preconditions for an effective and incisive SC, which involved disarmament of sovereign states, but that never happened. 

Hence, the contribution of the UN to our lives is immense. It is only the security council that could not be as effective as it could have been. However, even the SC contributed effectively in the Kuwait crisis, and at many other instances. 

Let’s not write off the UN as a system. It has a very significant role to play in strengthening the international legal order. Even Russia invoked Article 51 of the UN charter to justify its acts. 

Both humanity and the UN have a very bright future. The black clouds would go, and we must look forward to that. 

The author is a Ph.D. fellow at Hamburg University. He has written two books on financial laws.

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