At last, democratic multilateral governance without vetoes

With real satisfaction and hope we have read that "the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, demanded in the UN Security Council that the possibility of veto that some countries have in decision-making in this United Nations body be eliminated... Faced with this situation he considered it essential to react and therefore proposed a reform that would duly transform the system, conserving what works and modifying what has become obsolete". (EFE, 26/09/24).

At the end of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a perfect design for democratic multilateralism. The first sentence of the United Nations Charter is the great present duty: ‘We the peoples have resolved to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’.

He did more: he created a Commission to draft Human Rights chaired by a woman (his own wife, Eleonora) whose first article proclaims the equal dignity of all human beings... And UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, which must forge ‘free and responsible’ people, whose training will enable ‘the defences of peace to be constructed in the minds of men’.

In 79 years (since 1945) it has NOT been possible to implement the Charter, to fulfil the will of ‘We, the peoples...’, always silenced by the veto, by plutocratic and supremacist governance. It was Eisenhower, President of the United States, who had the courage, on 20 January 1961, to convey to his successor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the American people, that it was not the President but the ‘war-industrial complex’ who was really in charge in America. From President Wilson's creation of the League of Nations at the end of World War I to Roosevelt's founding of the United Nations, the opportunities for the transition from the force to the word progressively faded. ‘We the peoples...’ decisions were successively ignored by the veto of the five victorious countries of the Second World War.

The current state of global governance remains disabled by the veto. It is now urgent to recognise without further delay that it is ‘the peoples’, as stated in the UN Charter, who must assume their responsibilities with future generations in mind. It is now ethically imperative to avoid irreversible situations in many areas. For example, in the area of climate, affecting habitability on a planetary scale. Now there is no excuse. We can no longer accept to be told that the proposals made by the COP (how shameless!) are not ‘binding’. The scientific, academic and artistic community must, hand in hand and on a global scale, implement appropriate measures, rejecting the veto of the G7 and military institutions.

It has been 25 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration and Plan of Action on the Culture of Peace to replace force with words. The time has come to overcome so much resistance, to put into practice, for the New Era, the main proposal of the United Nations Charter: ‘We the peoples... have resolved to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. Duty of memory. It is our unpostponable duty to change, at last, the ‘bellum’ for the ‘verbum’! The Resolution and Plan of Action for a Culture of Peace could not be adopted at UNESCO because of the strict vigilance of the G7...

There is an urgent need for many voices to mobilise, aware that now - equal in dignity and able to participate - they must act immediately. Yes: now, for the first time in history, ‘We the Peoples ....’ can get the veto abolished in the United Nations ... and in the European Union, also disqualified from decision-making by the requirement of ‘unanimity’, the antithesis of democracy.

Faced with the terrible situation that thousands of children are currently living and suffering, citizens should react and finally stop being impassive spectators of what is happening and become active actors. Whether those who still have hegemonic ambitions want to admit it or not, the only solution is, as I have insisted so many times in recent years, to re-establish the United Nations, giving full validity to the 1945 Charter: with a Security Council without the right of veto... Citizenship aware that it can mobilise the media and many institutions and individuals for a great popular outcry capable of replacing the veto with democratic, multilateral action... The ‘war-industrial complex’ must cease to be the representative of force and become on a global scale the great protector of the word, allowing the reason of force to be transformed into the force of reason, inspired by the preamble of the UNESCO Constitution: ‘You shall act in accordance with the principles of democracy'.

It is clear, therefore, that the solution will not come from the current drift and marginalisation of multilateralism but from the full implementation of a truly United Nations.

Sapere aude’, “dare to know”, exclaimed Horace. Yes: dare to know... and then dare to know how to dare so that knowledge can unfold its immense potential. To know and to unite in order, forming a global network of great proportions, to be able, as a first historic step towards a new era, to remove the veto that disables the proper functioning of the excellent democratic design of the United Nations.

And then do the same with Organisations such as the European Union, which today are totally unable to proceed democratically because of the ‘unanimity’ requirement. 

I was personally involved in the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’, whose Agenda 21 (guidelines for the 21st century) was carefully drafted... and yet roundly rejected by the G-7. Ten years later, at the 3rd Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) were also quickly scaled down by plutocratic governance, despite the fact that they indicated very precise guidelines for behaviour, the adoption of measures of great urgency for the proper conservation of the environment.

In 2015, there was a new hopeful break: the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, signed the climate change agreements in Paris in September. And two months later, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he signed the excellent ‘Resolution to Transform the World’ on the 2030 Agenda. At last, a conscious citizenry could breathe a sigh of relief...! But it was only possible for a very short time: President Obama was replaced a few months later by the unusual President Donald Trump who, on the very day of his election, announced that he would not implement the agreements approved by his predecessor... 

And since then, the climate outlook has become even bleaker. Since then, the United Nations' veto has been joined by the European Union's veto, because of the “unanimity” requirement... and because - as we have already pointed out - the agreements reached at COP meetings... are not “binding”!

Today, 79 years later, we must note - a duty of memory - that it has never been possible to implement the Charter because of the veto given to the five victorious countries of the Second World War.

In the encyclical ‘Pacem in Terris’ in 1963, His Holiness Pope John XXIII, a lucid forerunner in so many dimensions of humanity, stated that ‘since today the common good of all peoples poses problems which affect all nations, and since such problems can only be faced by a public authority whose power, structure and means are sufficiently broad and whose range of action is worldwide, it follows that, by imposition of the world order itself, a general public authority must be constituted’. Indeed, both for the maintenance of international peace and security and for a politically and legally controlled, and therefore more humane and social, organisation, our main asset is the multilateral system of the United Nations.

In order to face common problems that even the most powerful cannot solve in isolation, States need permanent and institutionalised cooperation through International Organisations, i.e. in the framework of entities with their own organs and their own will, distinct and separate from that of the Member States, for the purpose of managing their cooperative relations in a given field of affairs. 

The first paragraph of the UN Charter is so prescient that it contains the three pillars which, today, could initiate the new era of humanity for a life of dignity for all human beings without exception. (1) The reins of destiny are in the hands of the ‘peoples’, which makes it clear that it is not up to absolute power but to citizen participation to govern at local, national, regional and global levels. (2) ‘Avoiding the horror of war’, which would mean ‘building peace’, and (3) it is up to the coming generations to inspire the great changes.

Let us give wings to the human species so that, without vetoes, it can act democratically for the great transition from the force to the word, each unique human being capable of creating, our hope. Now, at last, we can. Now we must act without delay. Duty of memory. Crime of silence.