Lord Ahmed rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they support strengthening of the United Nations.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to thank the Government and all your Lordships for taking part in this important debate. The United Nations remains the only global institution, with a membership of 191 member states, which has truly universal principles. The main objectives of the United Nations charter, being drawn up and coming into existence in 1945, were conflict prevention; to promote human rights, justice and respect for international obligations; and to promote social progress and better standards of life. The UN has evolved to deal with the challenges of peacekeeping roles as well as humanitarian work in times of conflict and during natural disasters.
The task for the United Nations is enormous, but the resources somewhat limited. Since 1945, its membership has increased from 51 to 191 and the world population has increased from 2.5 billion to more than 7 billion. The challenges of dealing with poverty, hunger and disease, such as HIV/AIDS, have also increased. Along with those problems, there have been many conflicts that have cost millions of lives in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, Kashmir, Chechnya and the Far East.
In my view, the United Nations Security Council is now facing the biggest challenge, which is its perceived lack of legitimacy since its birth. At least during the Cold War, debates took place within the Security Council, although with many vetoes been used by both superpowers. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, slowly, the role of the United Nations has been diminishing and recent events in the Middle East have proved that the sole superpower can and does ignore the United Nations-or at least, that is how it is perceived.
Much of the United Nations' work gets little publicity in relation to social development, gender equality, environmental protection, human rights, economic development and co-operation, international organised crime and other bodies such as UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, the IMF, the WHO-the list goes on of the successful work carried on by those UN bodies. The recent successful work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iran has been important and deserves to be commended.
The United Nations' credibility in preventing wars and genocides is also seriously damaged since the massacres of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 and the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. We have witnessed massacres of near-genocidal proportions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia, where the United Nations' response has been hesitant and slow. Much of the reason for that could be said to be due to the fact that the UN does not have available a rapid reaction force for peacekeeping and preventing wars and genocides.
The UN's ability to implement many outstanding resolutions is also seen as selective. Resolutions on the right of self-determination in Kashmir, for example, are outstanding from 1948 and 1949. The suffering of the Kashmiri people is continuing, with more than 80,000 deaths while both India and Pakistan continue to waste money on nuclear weapons rather than using their valuable resources for the eradication of poverty, which is desperately needed in both countries. India has more than 300 million people living below poverty, with half of Pakistan's population also living on less than two dollars a day.
The United Nations' biggest failure has been in relation to the Middle East, where the United States has vetoed resolutions in the Security Council in its support of Israel; and actions in Iraq have further undermined the authority of the Security Council.
There is a danger of the UN becoming ever more irrelevant in matters of world security, as did its predecessor, the League of Nations. If so, the job of stopping wars and genocides and of constraining tyrants would become even closer to impossible. For all those reasons, we must support the strengthening of the United Nations and help to regain its legitimacy. Otherwise, many countries will increasingly feel free to take unilateral action against perceived threats, further undermining world security.
I wholeheartedly support the Government's commitment and support for the reform of the UN in their Command Paper. I welcome the latest round of the Secretary-General's programme of reforms, launched in September 2002, entitled, Strengthening of the United Nations: an agenda for further change. I also welcome the Secretary-General's appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, to a high-level panel examining the ways in which the UN handles threats to international peace and security. I am delighted to see the noble Lord's name on the speakers' list and look forward to hearing his contribution.
Reform of the UN is inevitable and necessary. It must be democratic, less bureaucratic and more modern in all its services. The non-aligned movement must feel equal to the developed world; as the OIC and the Arab League must also feel as important as the European Union.
The question now being asked is how we can strengthen the United Nations. That is a vital and significant topic of debate which needs strategies and answers to avoid future problems. The UN must not lose its integral authority, importance and respect as an international forum. People's confidence in the council is weakening, and we must focus on the meaning and significance of what it is to be a part of the United Nations. As British citizens as well as international neighbours, we must be proud and confident that we are helping those in need.
Thousands and thousands of individuals and organisations around the world are working hard to control and manage issues of international peace and security. Many organisations have been extremely effective in protecting human rights and exposing gross violations wherever they have occurred, even in the past few days. Reforms need to be instigated to ensure that UN resolutions are strictly followed through and that international peace and security is looked at thoroughly and dealt with in the best way.
It is important that the United Nations states clearly the difference between Chapters 6 and 7 resolutions-although, in my opinion, all United Nations resolutions, from whichever chapter, are important and should be implemented. We must also ensure that countries such as Israel cannot defy and ignore UN authority time after time. If it is good enough for Mohamed El Baradei of the IAEA to go into Iran and Libya, it must be right for him to go into Israel to investigate its nuclear capabilities and weapons of mass destruction.
I support the Government's proposal for the expansion of the Security Council membership from 15 to 24, including some additional permanent members. It makes sense to include Germany and Japan as well as countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia. However, we must not support membership of any countries that have outstanding UN resolutions with which they have not complied.
We must also consider making the Security Council more inclusive and relevant to modern challenges. Seventy per cent of the wars and disputes are related to the Muslim world, whether in Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq or the Balkans. Therefore, it makes sense to include at least one permanent member from the OIC or the Arab League to ensure that there is representation from this section of the world community.
Another major challenge to us all has been international terrorism. We must fight it together whenever it threatens our national security and interests. We must be prepared to condemn state terrorism also. Many countries now abuse UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 2001, which is binding on all member states to combat terrorism by all means-that is, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts. Resolutions 1377 and 1373 of 2001 have a far-reaching impact on international human rights and humanitarian law, particularly in cases where the pursuit of human rights may be confused with the animation of terrorism. I quote the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"An effective international strategy to counter terrorism should use human rights as its unifying framework. The suggestion that human rights violations are permissible in certain circumstances is wrong. The essence of human rights is that human life and dignity must not be compromised and that certain acts, whether carried out by the state or non-state actors, are never justified no matter what the ends. International human rights and humanitarian law define the boundaries of permissible political and military conduct. A reckless approach towards human life and liberty undermines counter terrorism".
We must ensure that a war on terrorism is not perceived as a war on Islam or Muslims. We must give special attention to people's rights of liberty and security, the right to be free from arbitrary arrest, the presumption of innocence, the right to a free trial, freedom of opinion, expression and assembly, and the right of self-determination.