Our grand plan: an alternative to failed UN

FOR YEARS, foreign policy critics, politicians and outraged members of the public have been pushing for their respective countries to defund and quit the United Nations. Some have advocated that a rival or successor organisation be established.

Today, a replacement is being put forward: the Covenant of Democratic Nations (CDN). This writer has been involved in its founding.

Just days after controversial UN Resolution 2334 declared, among other things, that Israel’s Jewish connection to the Western Wall was effectively illegal, to ambassadorial applause in the room, concrete replacement action began. It started by proposing an official international conference that would put forward a diplomatic convention to be ratified by countries as a legally binding treaty.

The entire process would be open only to nations governed by democratic principles. Each member would or could defund the UN while building a successor entity dedicated to world peace on democratic principles with equal respect for all people regardless of religion, gender, race, identity or national origin, as well as formulating a mechanism to resolve disputes.

A prime mission of the new world body would be to re-ratify, amend or nullify all acts and resolutions of the UN and its agencies such as Unesco. Thus, the Covenant would create a new body of long-overdue, reformed, clarified and updated international law.

The Covenant conversation was launched on January 23, 2017 in Washington. Republican Congressman Trent Franks, who supports a bill to defund the UN, opened proceedings by declaring: “This is a critically important issue. The UN started out with a noble charter… but it has not only failed its charter, it has moved in the opposite direction and done actual harm … It has become an anti-American, antisemitic, anti-democratic, anti-freedom mob… We need to repeal and replace.”

Also on the panel was Ben Cohen of The Israel Project, who said: “You now have states that are basically glorified concentration camps … like North Korea, who get to have an equal voice with Australia, Canada and the US.”

He added that while Israel is the only nation whose sovereignty is “chipped away at on a daily basis”, the UN did little to stop human rights calamaties in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda or present-day Syria.

Sarah Stern, founder of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, pointed to America’s 22 per cent share of the UN budget, adding that the US was not getting what it pays for.

Constitutional attorney Nathan Lewin, who has worked on 28 Supreme Court cases, said: “The United Nations committed suicide when it adopted Resolution 2334. Today I am happy to join a group that would spell the end of the United Nations.”

Additional meetings and panels promoting the CDN took place this week across the US.

In many ways, the League of Nations began with a speech — Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The UN began with a short, written declaration. For the CDN, the conversation has now begun.

The UN has become an antisemitic mob

Human rights Edwin Black is the author of ‘IBM and the Holocaust’, and an initiator of the CDN