Ukrainian President’s Plea: Expel Russia or be ready to close down the UN
UNITED NATIONS, ( IPS) – A legendary quote attributed to Joseph Stalin perhaps applies to the United Nations. “How many divisions does the Pope have?” asked the Soviet leader, interrupting a speech by Winston Churchill in a bygone era.
If you don’t have an army of your own, or a military force behind your edicts or your resolutions, so the argument goes, you are fighting a losing battle—even as the United Nations remains helpless in the face of thousands of civilian deaths and the destruction of densely populated cities by Russian armed forces in Ukraine since February 24.
When he addressed the UN Security Council via video- conferencing on April 5, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not pull his punches when he told delegates the purposes of the UN Charter, especially Article I — to maintain international peace and security — are being blatantly violated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“What is the point of all other Articles (in the UN charter)? Are you ready to close the United Nations? Do you think that the time for international law is gone?” If not, “you need to act immediately,” he told delegates.
To support peace in Ukraine, he argued, the Security Council must either remove the Russian Federation from the UN, both as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions made about its own war, or the Council can “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing it can do other than engage in conversation.
“Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace,” he insisted.
But what Zelenskyy did not realise was a longstanding political reality: Russia, along with the US, UK, France and China ( P5), are “permanent members” armed with veto powers.
And they are “permanent” for life, either their life as a member state or the life of the United Nations-- whichever comes first.
Meanwhile, the US led a successful campaign to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) with a resolution which garnered two-thirds majority in the General Assembly on April 7. The voting read: 93 Yes, 24 Noes and 58 Abstentions.
Given the evidence of war crimes and serious human rights violations committed by Russian forces in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine, it’s essential that the UN and International Criminal Court move swiftly with their investigations to gather and preserve evidence”.
Which triggers the question: can Russia be suspended from its membership in the 193- member UN General Assembly (GA)?
Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told IPS: “The GA suspended apartheid South Africa for 20 years, from 1974 to post-elections in 1994. Russia qualifies as a comparable pariah with its unprovoked and illegal war in Ukraine. It would be an important new precedent to say “nyet” to recolonisation.”
The precedent in the HRC is Libya, which the HRC voted to suspend and then the GA by consensus voted to suspend that regime, said Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).
In an op- ed piece for IPS, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former President of the Security Council and UN Under-Secretary-General, pointed out that the General Assembly effectively suspended three UN member states: Cambodia in 1997, Yugoslavia in 1992 and South Africa in 1974.
He said the suspension or expulsion of Russia is “almost impossible” according to the UN Charter. “To that, I would add that it is a deadlock but not a deadend.”
Some UN watchers, he wrote, are of the opinion that there are still ways to limit Russia’s presence in the UN beyond the Security Council, as has been just decided by the UNGA to suspend its membership in the UN Human Rights Council.
Louis Charbonneau, United Nations director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “Given the evidence of war crimes and serious human rights violations committed by Russian forces in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine, it’s essential that the UN and International Criminal Court move swiftly with their investigations to gather and preserve evidence”.
He said the victims and their families need justice. Suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, a body it’s clearly unfit to be a member of, is an important step to holding Russian authorities accountable for their actions.”
After the vote to suspend Russia from the HRC , Charbonneau said: “The General Assembly has sent a crystal-clear message to Russia’s leadership that a government whose military is routinely committing horrific rights violations has no business on the UN Human Rights Council”.
He said gruesome images from Bucha have shocked people around the world. Victims and their families deserve to see those responsible held to account. Investigators from the UN and International Criminal Court should set the wheels of justice in motion by moving swiftly to gather and preserve evidence of war crimes.
In his address to the Security Council, the Ukrainian President also said the “UN Charter must be immediately restored and the system reformed so that the veto power does not represent the right to die, and so there is fair representation in the Council of all world regions.”
If tyranny in places from Syria to Somalia had received a response, it would have ceased to exist, and an “honest peace” would have prevailed.
A war against Ukrainian citizens would not have been launched. Instead, the world watched, and turned its eyes away from the occupation of Crimea, the war against Georgia, the taking of Transnistria from the Republic of Moldova and the preparations of Russian troops for another war near the border.
“The Russian military and those who gave them orders must be brought to justice and charged with war crimes in Ukraine, before a tribunal similar to the one created in Nuremburg,” he declared.
Asked whether Russia could be kicked out of the Security Council, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said: “Look, the Security Council was created as a product of the creation of the UN after World War II. They are a member of the Security Council. That’s a fact. We can’t change that fact, but we certainly can isolate them in the Security Council. We can make their presence in that body very uncomfortable. And we have done that,” she added.