The Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Olena Kondratiuk shared her thoughts on the need for fundamental changes in the activities of the United Nations in an op-ed for Kyiv Security Forum.
She recalled that in April 1946, the League of Nations officially ceased to exist, having failed to fulfil its mission of ensuring peace and order in the world. The same year, the UN replaced the League of Nations.
According to the Vice-Speaker, despite dozens of local wars that the UN failed to prevent or resolve, but only froze with the help of peacekeeping contingents and, for example, a silent reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the war in Afghanistan, the authority of the United Nations has remained unshakable until recently.
“It was very convenient to think that there was an organisation in the world that was like a pillar of world order and security. Until russia invaded Ukraine. Having levelled the Geneva Conventions and thrown them into the trash. By committing all war crimes imaginable. Blackmailing the world with nuclear weapons. By terrorising the civilian population. Committing genocide. By destroying all illusions about the world order and the security system,” notes Olena Kondratiuk.
“And what is the UN doing, apart from the usual expression of deep concern? Or perhaps the KING is simply NAKED, and Ukraine is the boy from Andersen’s fairy tale who is not afraid to say it out loud? Perhaps the king is dressed in the clothes of statutes, inertia, bureaucracy? And these are the robes of indifference, not action, weakness, not strength, imitation, not truth?” adds the Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
She stressed that the League of Nations was created as a response to the crisis. It failed to cope with the next one, and the UN came to replace it as a response to a new crisis.
“And now we have another crisis, which the organisation obviously cannot cope with. In his tale, Andersen does not say what happened after the king was exposed. Perhaps he was overthrown by deceived people. Or perhaps he repented, radically revised his lifestyle and ruled for many more years. But we are not in a fairy tale. If the world agrees that this king is ‘naked’, we have to think about what will happen afterwards,” says Olena Kondratiuk.
According to the Vice-Speaker, several questions arise at once: what to do with the UN and how to reform the organisation so that it responds more effectively to current challenges, in particular, those related to russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
“To dissolve the UN, leaving the world in the midst of war without the ghostly, but still familiar support? Or to launch a radical reform of the organisation, which for many years seems to exist only to exist? At least start by preventing the aggressor from assuming the presidency of the UN Security Council and taking away russia’s veto power in the Security Council, where it is arbitrarily and unjustifiably present? I’ve been talking about this for a year now and wrote about it in detail a few months ago,” Olena Kondratiuk said.
The Deputy Chairperson of the Ukrainian Parliament also stressed the need to convene an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on the intention of the russian aggressor to deploy nuclear weapons in belarus – to convene it urgently, in accordance with the 1968 international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“What should this reform look like? How to achieve global balance and order? How to end the war? These are difficult questions. There is no clear answer to them. Let’s think together,” urged Olena Kondratiuk.