Is Republic of China still a permanent member of UNSC – despite its Ouster in 1971?
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 5 2019 (IPS) - The Republic of China (Taiwan) withdrew from the United Nations in protest when it was ousted from its highly-prized permanent seat in the UN Security Council ( UNSC) about 48 years ago.
But according to the UN charter, it still remains one of the five permanent members of the most powerful body in the Organisation—perhaps much to the delight of the Taiwanese.
The resolution that was adopted by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) back in October 1971 declared the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate representative of mainland China paving the way for the immediate takeover of the seat from Taiwan.
Although the Charter has been amended five times—described as a laborious process requiring a two-thirds majority in the 193-member General Assembly— there has been no serious attempts to rectify the UNSC anomaly.
And a second shortcoming in the UN charter is the listing of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as a permanent member of the Security Council, when it ceased to exist back in 1991, with the Russian Federation assuming the rights and obligations as a successor state.
The five permanent members (P5s) of the UNSC are the US, France, China, UK and the Russian Federation. But the Charter, which looks like a relic of a bygone era, begs to differ.
The PRC, which is politically sensitive to the issue of Taiwan –which it considers a province of mainland China– has been openly critical of the use of the name “Taiwan” at UN gatherings.
At a meeting of the UN Committee on NonGovernmental Organisations last January, the Chinese delegate reprimanded several NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, International Press Institute, Open Society and Reporters Sans Frontiers International, for “not using the correct United Nations terminology for Taiwan” (namely, Republic of China) on their websites.
“If PRC is so sensitive about the issue of Taiwan, how come it has learnt to live with the erroneous listing of ROC as a permanent member of the UNSC for the last 48 years”? asked one Western diplomat.
Ian Williams, a longstanding journalist who has covered the UN since the 1980s and is author of “UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War,” sarcastically posed the question in Shakespearean terms: “What’s In a name?… that which we call ROC by any other name would smell as sweet”.
Referring to the Chinese complaints at the NGO meeting, he said: “Sadly, the UN Charter is not susceptible to a “delete and replace” button.”
It is a much more tedious process than that, he told IPS.
“If Northern Ireland dropped out of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” following Brexit, would London lose its veto in the UN Security Council, since that is what the relevant clause in the Charter calls it?”, asked Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).
Luckily for London, he pointed out, the UN has precedents galore.
Any questioning of its status would embarrass Beijing, sitting in the seat reserved for the Republic of China, and Moscow, which says “nyet” on behalf of the USSR (deceased), said Williams.
When the USSR was dissolved it was discreetly and tacitly accepted that no one would mention the change in the nameplate, he noted
“Moscow had assumed the whole Soviet debt, so none of the successor states objected, and since it also inherited the Soviet nuclear arsenal, no one else did either.”
It was a triumph of pragmatism, said Williams, a senior analyst who has written for newspapers and magazines around the world, including the Australian, The Independent, New York Observer, The Financial Times and The Guardian
James Paul, former executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum ( 1993- 2012), refers to the discrepancies in the Charter in his recently-released book on the UNSC.
Titled “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council,” the book points out that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991 “provided another act in this strange drama.”
He says a number of successor states came into being, of which the Russian Federation was the largest. It was certainly not the major power that the USSR had been, having a far reduced population and economy.
Although the new state was clearly not the same as the old, the permanent members did not want to open up the “dreaded membership question.”
The answer was a “quick fix,” as the Russians officially took over the Soviet seat. “Crafty stage management had maintained a sense of enduring permanency,” says Paul.
Asked for an official response, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS that for China, the relevant resolution is the 1971 GA resolution, whereas the USSR’s responsibilities were taken over by the Russian Federation as its successor state.
“You are aware that formal amendments to the Charter are a fairly extensive process entailing ratification of those amendments by two-thirds of the members, in accordance with articles 108 and 109 of the Charter,” he explained.
( The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org)