In the face of increasing criticism of the UN, Colm Ó Cuanacháin of Amnesty argues that the organisation is more vital than ever but needs reform
The UN Charter of 1946 was a response to the Holocaust - governments set up a political and legal framework for international law, aimed at preventing atrocities on the same scale ever again. It led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNESCO, UNICEF, and other bodies charged with protecting specific human rights.
Within two generations, the triumph of the UN vision was obvious. The 1980s and 1990s saw the Convention on the Rights of the Child; Convention Against Torture; the Beijing World Conference on Women's Rights; and the establishment of the International Criminal Court, all of which have brought extraordinarily positive changes to millions of people.
But the blind spots in the vision had also been exposed. The UN's inexcusable failure to listen to the predictions of its own staff of impending massacres in, for example, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia; the shameful failure to engineer effective global responses to environmental degradation, to abject poverty, or to the spread of HIV/AIDS or the ongoing onslaught of malaria.
So the UN oscillated into this century. Amnesty International, other organisations, and some governments began to wonder publicly about the relevance and effectiveness of the UN. Its inability to agree a mechanism for intervention in Iraq saw the UN sidelined. The nonsense whereby international intervention in Chechnya or Uighur - where thousands are dying - could not even be considered, as both Russia and China enjoy a Security Council veto, saw the UN neutered. Ineptitude in dealing with internal failures such as massive corruption in the oil for food programme, as proven by the Volcker Commission, saw the UN exposed.
Against this backdrop the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, conducted a fundamental review, and the resultant 101 recommendations will be considered by the General Assembly later this year.
So what would it really take to make the UN more successful, and more meaningful, in the promotion, protection and fulfilment of human rights? First, the governments that make up the UN are allowing decision-making power to slip from their grasp as they facilitate a global market where corporations enjoy increasing levels of influence. They assign increasing control to regional bodies such as the EU, or the OAS, and allow non-governmental think-tanks and organisations to exercise undue pressure.
Yet the UN is built, and rightly so, on the essential premise that it is states, and the governments that lead them, that are accountable to the people for the realisation of all rights for all. The challenge is to governments to reassert their power and associated responsibilities to citizens at national and international level.
Second is the issue of monitoring and enforcement of human rights protections. Currently the UN monitors belligerent states through a largely ineffective and massively under-resourced system of committees and rapporteurs. The committee members are appointed through political barter to a significant degree. The nominees are aware that they will have to function largely as volunteers and so the posts tend only to attract academics or others with time and independent means. The performance of committees and individual members is not independently evaluated. The committees have limited powers of censure over offending states.
Despite this, these bodies continue to attract high-quality members, and have had a positive impact, for example in Ireland where the negative report on access to rights for people with disabilities from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has been both a source of embarrassment to the Government and a tool of influence for disability and human rights advocacy groups. It is necessary to increase vastly the investment in accountability mechanisms so governments adhere to the human rights standards they have already agreed.
Third, UN human rights-mandated field programmes, the eyes and ears of the international community on the ground watching, reporting, supporting, and advocating, are essential. Yet the UN fails to fully resource and support these offices. For example in Darfur where the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had to wait until November 2004 before she could even set up an operation there and is still struggling to find resources to run it effectively.
In the absence of effective monitoring by the UN or the African Union, the predictions for the people of the region remain grim. To stop this stupidity, where abusing governments run roughshod over their own people and the UN, there needs to be a much greater investment on the ground where it really counts.
Fourth, standard-setting remains essential. The UN must continue to develop international treaties and instruments to advance human rights.
The current processes include efforts to develop an Arms Trade Treaty, the UN Business Norms, and the Convention on Disability, and they require the ongoing support of governments, not just in their development, but also in monitoring and implementation.
It will be a critical period for the UN as Kofi Annan comes the end of his tenure. The Irish Government enjoys considerable legitimacy and credibility on the UN stage, and is well placed to exercise constructive influence during 2005 in the certainty that a stronger multilateral accountability system will make life better for all.
The UN, even with the wholehearted support of governments, can never be a panacea for the inevitable evils that some regimes will perpetrate.
But, like democracy, it has demonstrated that, given a fair chance, it is humanity's best option. It is 60 years this year since the Holocaust concentration camps were revealed to the world. Could anything as evil happen again? There are countries where it may well be happening right now, such as North Korea and Burma. And there are the Darfurs, the Guantanamos, the Pinochets, the Saddams.
But it is becoming harder and harder for these human rights atrocities to be kept hidden, and the body of international law, along with institutions such as the ICC and regional courts of justice, are gradually applying systems of accountability. A properly reformed and resourced UN is the way forward in all our interests.