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Christmas Island refugee crisis - lay the blame at the
United Nations' door
September 1, 2001
It is time to look beyond
the international furore concerning the 450 refugees on the M.V. Tampa
anchored off Christmas Island and focus on the source of the refugee problem.
While a few wealthy
people can afford to pay people-smugglers for an illegal passage to
Australia, up to 20 million potential refugees around the world exist in
unspeakable conditions with their only prospects being terror,
starvation, torture or death.
Why is this? Because the
United Nations has become an expensive, bureaucratic irrelevancy that
refuses to carry out its mandate. While performing some useful
functions, in terms of human rights it is an absolute disaster. The UN
has the blood of one million Rwandans on its hands, yet all it does is
pick soft targets like Australia to complain about treatment of
Aborigines.
The problem with the UN
stems from the renegade regimes and dictatorships led by China,
overruling any proposed humanitarian action. Time and again China, and
often Russia, as permanent members of the Security Council, use their
veto to block actions to tackle human rights abuses. China uses its
political, economic and military muscle to control the votes of the
dictatorships and impoverished nations to prevent any examination of its
own egregious human rights abuses, including the genocide of Tibet.
Urgent United Nations reform needed
The only solution is for
the democratic nations to put aside their petty differences, look at the
big picture and form a solid voting bloc to defeat the actions of the
dictatorships. The democratic bloc should reform the UN to achieve five
outcomes:
1) Allow only democratic
countries to sit on the UN Security Council.
2) Remove the power of
veto from the Security Council members.
3) Weight
the voting of the General Assembly, and the membership of committees, in
favour of the level of democracy and the size of the nation.
4) Set up a permanent UN
police force, suitably armed, to rapidly intervene in any crisis. This
force to be backed up by troops previously allocated from the democratic
countries
5) Allow the Security
Council to order UN intervention into any country where there is clear
evidence of genocide or gross violations of human rights.
The NATO countries have
already set the precedent in Kosovo of intervening in so-called domestic
affairs.
Let the UN take over
terror regimes such as Afghanistan and remain in control until democracy
and a working economy are firmly established. Then there would be no
more Afghani refugees.
If the democratic
countries are unable to achieve their objectives at the UN then it is
time for them to act bravely and withdraw from the UN and set up the UDN
(the United Democratic Nations) with full membership and voting rights
available only to democracies. The undemocratic regimes could join as
non-voting associates. If the democracies led by the United States
withdrew financial support for the existing UN, it would collapse
overnight. The useful functions would be picked up by the new
organisation.
Prime Minister Howard
could come out of the present crisis with statesmanlike status if he
graciously accepted the refugees on board the Tampa subject to the
democratic nations agreeing to discuss reform of the United Nations
along the lines outlined here. Only then will we truly solve the refugee
problem.
Mr Howard would do well
to take the lead in this process and divert some of the millions spent
on processing refugees to promote this idea around the world.
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