UN: Senior Appointments

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for securing this debate, and indeed for couching it in sufficiently wide terms to enable us to cover extensive ground, looking at the effectiveness as well as the appointments. Those two certainly go hand in hand.

Let me deal with the most important issue to do with the UN’s effectiveness: the perception—widely held across both the global north and south—that the UN is again ineffective in dealing with international peace and security. Whether you are a Rohingya in Myanmar fleeing for your life, or an Iraqi or Syrian citizen living under years of war, what is clear to you is that the UN has been pretty much absent in terms of resolving the crisis that afflicts you. I do not mean absent in terms of providing humanitarian assistance, but ineffective in resolving or ending the conflict. It is not even capable of providing a safe haven, which it was able to do in the mid-1990s.

Likewise Ukraine, where we have seen the most egregious threat to the country’s territorial integrity, yet the UN is deadlocked. The public out there are not really interested in the endless discussions of reform, the composition of the United Nations Security Council or the way that the veto is used. Rather, they want the UN to apply its heft to stop conflicts or, better still, to prevent them happening in the first place. However, this debate affords us the opportunity to discuss effectiveness, so I will say one or two things about Security Council reform.

We have the French proposals from 2013, which suggest that the five permanent members of the Security Council—China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States—themselves could voluntarily agree a code of conduct which would call for them not to exercise their veto in circumstances where severe levels of loss of life and atrocity had taken place. Under the Fabius proposals, as they are referred to, at least 50 member states would be required to request the Secretary-General to,

“determine the nature of the crime”.

On delivery of the Secretary-General’s report, the code of conduct would apply and the permanent members would desist from using their veto.

This French plan is pragmatic and does not call for the code of conduct to apply where the “vital national interests” of a P5 member are at stake. It gives the Secretary-General the power to assess what that vital national interest might be. I want to use one or two examples. Would the existence of the Russian naval base at Tartus exempt Russia from the code of conduct? One could plausibly argue that it would not. The existence of the base is itself now imperilled with the rise of ISIL and potentially by the collapse of the Assad regime in any event. It is a counterfactual and we cannot know for sure, but Russian interests may well have been better served through an intervention in 2013 and a negotiated settlement at that time. That could have resulted in a viable transitional Government and averted the break-up of Syria.

Another example, using Russia again, would be the invasion of Crimea. Here, needless to say, as Russia was the aggressor in any event, clearly no code of conduct would have held it back and we would have continued with deadlock. One can move on to another example using China and the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute. They are clearly seen in China as a “vital national interest” and therefore one would presume that the veto suspension would not apply in that case. However, China has myriad other disputes with its neighbours which could potentially be resolved through the offices of the Secretary-General and the use of the United Nations Security Council were a veto not an automatic right that China had.

In order to make the code more appealing to the permanent five, it may well prove necessary for a further escape clause to be inserted, and here I propose a concession that the French plan does not. It is that if the P5 member believes strongly that the Secretary-General’s analysis does not take into account its vital national interest vis-à-vis a particular situation, it can still employ a veto. However, this should be an exceptional measure and there should be a requirement for it to publish a written explanation of why it felt it important to deviate from the code. In responding, will the Minister be able to touch on those French proposals? They are not new and they will not come as a surprise to him. It will be very interesting to know the UK’s position on them.

I turn now to the other arrow in the bow of UN reform—that of reform of the appointment of the Secretary-General. In the last two years we have had several goes in this House at fleshing out the Government’s willingness to lead on reform. In the mean time, we have seen an acceleration of civil society groups lobbying for reform as well. My party’s position on this is well known. There should be a more transparent process of appointment; regional pre-emption, whereby the region which considers it is “its turn” prevents others even being nominated, should be abandoned; and the putative postholders should be evaluated against clear and transparent criteria, irrespective of the region they come from. Moreover, there should be an extended single term so that the energies of the Secretary-General can be focused on the job in hand rather than on lobbying for a reappointment.

The House will also be well aware of my view that, after 70 years, it is time for a woman to lead the UN. The job is far too important to be left to less than half the world’s population. But I recognise that I cannot both argue for the best candidate and unequivocally state that it has to be a woman. One cannot let the best be the enemy of the good, so I have a compromise in that regard. In order for a suitably qualified female candidate to be considered for 2016, I suggest that the five permanent members agree not to veto a suitably qualified woman candidate on the basis of regional representation. In other words, they should make a bold public pledge this September, when the session commences next week, that they have agreed to set aside the veto in order for the best women worldwide to be considered for the post. It is a very limited ask, after eight men of varying competence have held the job in the past, that finally a group of women should get a serious look-in. When I last looked there were some 40 women who had served as heads of state and government, and others in other senior positions, past and present, who might have qualified—not to mention a host of others from within other international organisations.

If the UN can at least demonstrate a modicum of competence, fairness and representativeness, then there is some hope for its relevance in the world. I look forward to the Minister’s views on these proposals, and indeed to action on them.