Un Action Against Terrorism Essay Example for Free

Un Action Against Terrorism Essay The issue of coming up with ways to combat terrorism has been prioritized by the entire community internationally and it is also a major task in the United Nations. Various UN bodies have come up with different initiatives to try and combat terrorism and bring to justice those involved with the act. The most controversial issue within the UN in its battle against terrorism is the counter terrorism measures that are stipulated in the resolutions of the UN Security Council. One of the most serious threats towards human rights in the world is terrorism as it takes lives of thousands of innocent people every year and also breaks democratic orders. It is quite important for Countries to react to any threat of terrorism but at the same time there have been concerns that some forceful measures against terrorism may also greatly violate the human rights. The UN requires balancing the two competing interests in the fight against terrorism which are individual rights on one hand and protection of civilian and national security on the other hand. In some exceptional circumstances to curb threats and activities of terrorism there may be some justification to the abuse of human rights but only when it is an emergency case. It is very important for any country to ensure that any decisions that are made in order to preserve national security are according to the law, compensation is done to individuals whose rights were violated and those decisions should be subjected to review in the near future to avoid violation of human rights. The UN did not make any attempt to resume or revive the efforts that the League of Nations had made to control international terrorism after these rules were greatly interrupted by the Second World War. These efforts had finished the integration of the 1973 complementary conventions to deal with the punishment and prevention of terrorism and also the establishment of an International Criminal Court. This has resulted in a problem of international terrorism as it has been observed in a number of actions that have been carried out by the UN involving progressive development and codification of the international law since the early 1950s. Before the year 1972 the issue of terrorism was not a major topic of discussion in the general assembly of the UN. In 1972 there was a kidnapping of Israeli athletes at Munich during the Olympic Games, as this was seen as an act of terrorism, the then Secretary-General of the UN introduced an item on measures to curb terrorism and any kind of violence that would take innocent lives or endanger any human fundamental freedom to be discussed in the twenty-seventh session of the United Nations National Assembly. In 1985 the General Assembly of the UN pointed out that there may be some cases in which the perpetrators may be pushed to terrorist acts by violation of the human rights; it also urged Nations and the UN organs to make contributions to the progressive elimination of any causes underlying international terrorism. Sri Lanka is one of the examples where the UN failed to fight terrorism; this is clear in that the Sri Lanka government was able to reduce the LTTE power from being a formidable organization to a mediocre organization. The LTTE is one of the most cruel and ruthless terrorist groups that can use any weapon to cause mass destruction of property and loss of life. The UN took no action to try and bring to an end the LTTE group of terrorists but fortunately the Rajapaksa government succeeded in defeating the LTTE. The main objective of the UN is to settle disputes between countries by use of diplomatic approaches before the countries decide to use military force or before the conflict becomes uncontrollable. Unfortunately the UN has not attained this goal. The UN is a forum where member states send representatives to argue for or against their countries. These representatives have been seen to be just spokesmen for their country but back in their country they do not have any power or influence. Another issue is that those countries that are ruled by dictators or those that are not at peace use the UN debates to delay and complicate issues in their favour. Over the last fifty years during the existence of the UN the debates have not resolved any issues but threats, direct military action and hidden negotiations that were not sponsored by the UN have had positive changes in solving most of the conflicts. An example of this is the case of Iraq which was under the UN forces for over 100 years during which the Iraqi people were subjected to sufferings while on the other hand Saddam Hussein continued with his dirty games with the UN of only allowing inspection of weapons of mass destruction at certain periods and also coming up with solutions to the oil for food agreement imposed by the UN. This stalemate was broken by the United States of America by invading and overthrowing the Saddam regime. Had this stalemate not been broken the people of Iraq would still be under the oppressive rule of Saddam. The UN has also been unable to take actions that are direct and independent without seeking the support of its members. In the current world which is full of oppressive regimes and war mongering dictators who understand that the UN lacks any real power therefore making them free to do anything they want. For example the North Korea has been testing nuclear weapons and it has currently threatened to do it again while the UN is just considering an act of sanctions. If North Korea today decides to use the nuclear weapons in an act of terrorism many people would end up losing their lives just because the UN failed to take action in time. The member States of the UN should then be urged to contribute equal military force or money that is equivalent. The UN should then have these resources at its disposal and it should be free to use it without any approval from any of its member states. There are 5 selected member countries of the UN that can disagree on any decision that the majority of the States had agreed upon. These countries are China, USA, Russia, United Kingdom and France because they founded the UN that came up with the rules of UN after the Second World War. This has resulted in a lot of problems in the UN because these countries with the veto power were not elected democratically and therefore there is reason to believe that the decisions that the countries take are truly biased. This is a problem that has greatly caused people in this world to lose lives and it is not aimed to come to an end any time soon because the countries with the veto power are not willing to give up this power and allow for fair selection. The other failure of the UN is that most of its members are not countries geared towards peace and have questionable voting practices. The only solution to solve this problem would be to deny such nations the power to voting during any meetings of the UN. This is not easy to implement because countries debate in the UN forum only if they have the right to vote in the UN Security Council. UN considers itself a humanitarian body while on the other hand it continues allowing non-humanitarian countries like China to vote on humanitarian issues. The other area where the UN has failed to take action on terrorism is by the fact that UN does not formally recognize any State as a terrorist. Terrorists on the other hand would not debate in a public forum like the UN or seek help from the UN to sort out their issues and this clearly shows that the UN does not get involved in any way with the terrorists. Due to this the UN has been seen to be completely blind to terrorists and it has no intentions of addressing the terrorists and this is not likely to change soon. UN being the largest organization in the world that promotes peace should not be completely unable to address terrorism and therefore this has been seen as a complete failure to the UN in fighting terrorism. The United Nations has also been seen to fail in the action against terrorism because it has for a long time been unable to clearly define terrorism without putting policies that would annoy some of its strongest member states. UN has found itself in a state of confusion as Islamic states argue that the fight against occupation should be exempted from the definition of terrorism as this is well stipulated by the UN in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) of 1998 which clearly states that the struggle of the people either peaceful or armed struggle against any foreign occupation shall not be termed as an act of violence. The issue of terrorism as been complicated more by the fact that the struggle of the people to free themselves from any foreign occupation and/or colonialism does not in any way constitute an act of terrorism. Some of the Islam clerics have also considered the presence of the US and other foreign forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as occupation and therefore they do not term any act of the citizens of this country to free themselves from foreign occupation as an act of terrorism. Due to lack of a definition of terrorism there has been failure of the UN to come up with a complete detailed convention on international terrorism but instead it has adopted a document it calls Global Counter Terrorism Strategy which is based on an unknown definition of terrorism. In conclusion the UN has failed in many areas in the fight against terrorism. For the UN to fight terrorism globally it should be in a position to address terrorists and come up with ways of preventing anymore loss of lives. The UN should also understand that the terrorists are people who can be negotiated with and therefore coming with a democratic solution for both sides. UN should also stop involving member states that are not humanitarian in any humanitarian issues. In general the World requires a stronger peace international police who will be free to act without getting orders from any of the UN state members. REFERENCES LIST Giuseppe Nesi, Contributor Giuseppe Nesi (2006) International cooperation in counter terrorism: the United Nations and regional organizations in the fight against terrorism (Published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ,), 2006 P. 47-48 Leel Pathirana, Failure to understand the conflict by UN and the West has created a humanitarian Crisis, Asian Tribune, pp. 1-3, 18-4-2009, Available at Asiantribune. com M. Sassoli (2004), use and abuse of laws of war in the war on terrorism law and equality, A journal of theory and practice, vol. 22,2004, pp. 195-213 Maogoto, Jackson Nyamuya, Walking an International Tightrope: Use of Military Force to Counter Terrorism Willing the End. Brooklyn Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2006. Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, UN Anti-Terror Effort Bogged Down Over Terrorism Definition, Tuesday, September 02, 2008, (CNSNews. com) Phil for humanity, A guide for the survival of humankind, and improving the world, society and yourself, why the United Nations is a useless failure, available online athttp://www. philforhumanity. com