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Instilling 'musyawarah' in UN Security Council
The trend is worrying. It leaves us wondering whether every critical discontent and deadlock at the UNSC should be resolved by vote.
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Syrians wave the national flag and wave portraits of President Bashar al-Assad as they gather at the Umayyad Square in Damascus on April 14, 2018, to condemn the strikes carried out by the United States, Britain and France against the Syrian regime. (AFP/Stringer)
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n April 13, the United States, France and the United Kingdom launched a coordinated air strike targeting the sites of suspected Syrian chemical facilities. The western allies finally took the matter into their own hands after a series of deadlocks at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which sought a resolution to address the Syrian government’s alleged chemical attack on April 4.
The UNSC’s failure to reach consensus is telling for many reasons. First, it failed in a situation that purportedly threatened world peace and security. Second, it failed to allow a credible investigation to be carried out in order to clarify whether chemical weapons were really used. Third, it failed to authorize the use of all necessary means to redress the alleged use of chemical weapons in the war in Syria.
The air strike certainly raised some critical issues. Was it justified without the world security council’s authorization? How should the council act when it is entangled in power politics? Should the council be guided by a new mechanism to address grave humanitarian situations?
The recent strike against Syria was neither the first nor the only one of its kind. In the first 18 years of the 21st century, member countries committed to the use of force in several instances without the UNSC’s nod of approval. They were sometimes justified on a whim of humanitarian intervention or preemptive self-defense, or simply because it was a war.
