Calls are growing for the UN Security Council to be reformed after the US became the only member to use its veto power to block a Gaza ceasefire resolution, a move welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UN chief says he will keep pushing for peace.
Nobody is surprised and that’s a bad sign. The UN was invented to give the nations of our world a shared forum to talk things out and find a “resolution” before genociding each other. The thing is we can’t expect the UN to stop conflict.
Edit: Some people seem to confuse the UN security council with the UN. The SC has only 15 members (5 permanent member nations, 10 rotating member nations) and is usually asked to vote on intervention once a resolution was passed. It can’t act with a veto.
Yeah, this is something people don’t quite understand. The UN primarily provides platform to initiate diplomatic discourse.
Even when there is demand to reform the UN to give it more power, most people will object because “'muh sovereignty”.
This is the point exactly. The UN is a voluntary forum for signatory nations to meet and talk shit out.
What some people think of instead is the UN security council made up of 5 permanent members (US, UK, France, China, Russia) and 10 rotating members (every two years) deciding on intervention in conflicts, but there can be no veto on resolutions. That’s been a problem in the past, because rival nations just cancel each other out on some issues, making meaningful progress difficult.
People shouldn’t blame the UN for initiating talks. We now know, 121 nations are in favor of a ceasefire, 44 abstained or are too afraid to take sides and only 14 veto’d it and wanna continue bombing, that sends a pretty clear message about what the majority of nations thinks should happen.
Instead blame the nuclear powers for not being able to talk to each other anymore, blame the radicals in any conflict. Don’t blame the diplomacy.
If the UN was serious about promoting peace, they’d have occupied Gaza themselves over a decade ago.
This vote, like all votes, is political. It’s not for some higher purpose
Or even better, come up with a solution that’s more than “unconditional ceasfire right now, you figure out the rest”. How is any country supposed to follow that.
Besides, the UN shits on Israel as a pastime, that should be the first thing addressed in a UN reform.
Which is hilarious because this split state was basically created by them. Anyone could see the tensions as a result of it and the only reason that Israel wasn’t pushed out on multiple occasions was they won. They exist because they ignored the UN beyond the initial state creation.
To be fair, it’s the same countries that ignored the UN’s resolution to create the two states and instead went to war against Israel that are also the cause of the constant petty resolutions against Israel. The system was broken from day 1.