Global Policy Forum

By Jeff Sallot

Canada is calling for a sweeping reform of the United Nations, including the expulsion of members who violate the fundamental principles of the world body. Canada also wants permanent members of the UN Security Council to refrain from using their veto to block peacemaking or policing operations in a crisis if there is a broad international consensus to proceed.

The UN Charter makes it clear "membership is not a right, but a commitment to uphold the principles and purposes of the organization," Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said yesterday. Yet membership standards are not being applied, he said in a keynote speech in New York to a UN reform conference convened by the Academic Council on the United Nations System.

He cited three examples to make his point: Libya's election earlier this year to the chairmanship of the UN Commission on Human Rights despite the North African country's poor record of jailing and torturing political opponents. Iraq's membership at the UN Disarmament Conference last year while the regime of Saddam Hussein was being scrutinized by UN arms inspectors. Rwanda's membership on the Security Council in 1994 when the country's regime was slaughtering members of the Tutsi ethnic minority. "The time has come to revisit the basis upon which membership in these bodies is determined," Mr. Graham said. "The UN must consider suspending or expelling member states which have failed in their obligation to the organization and violated the basic principles of the Charter," he added.

The toughest UN reform issue of them all is the question of the Security Council, where five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France -- each has a veto, which means anyone can thwart the will of the other four permanent members and the 10 elected representative countries. He endorsed a reform proposal that would not allow the use of a veto to block resolutions authorizing military intervention to protect human lives if a Security Council majority favours the intervention. The UN as an organization often takes the rap for the political failures that have more to do with the policies and decisions of individual member states, he said.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Graham suggested that permanent members of the Security Council should be restricted to using a veto only if they can find a second permanent member to support them. A number of humanitarian efforts have been stymied over the years because of the threatened use of a veto, he said. Asked for some examples, Mr. Graham diplomatically declined to point fingers. But Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign affairs minister, and other Canadian officials were critical of the U.S. government in 1994 for failing to support deployment of a large international force to prevent the Rwandan genocide.

Mr. Graham also proposed making greater use of the UN General Assembly to deal with major issues rather than passing off the "big issues" to the Security Council.

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