Syria and the UN General Assembly: ‘Uniting for Peace’….?

by Kennedy Graham

Last week the UN General Assembly voted (138 to 12, with 17 abstaining) on the resolution backing the Arab League’s peace plan for Syria.

The Assembly condemns Damascus for ‘widespread and systematic violations of human rights’, calls for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from towns and cities, urges the president to stand down, supports the Arab League plan, and urges the UN Secretary-General to appoint a special envoy to Syria.

Russia and China opposed, critiquing the resolution as unbalanced in supporting the rebels and isolating the Syrian Government (‘one-sided pressure cannot help a proper settlement’). China has sent its own envoy to Damascus – striving to emulate Russia which has already done that…

The Arab League had called for a joint UN-Arab League peacekeeping mission. Western powers have not supported and the resolution did not endorse it.  So the prospect of a 1950s-style ‘Uniting for Peace’ force, sanctioned by the General Assembly without Security Council approval, is remote.

The Syrian Government had proposed a referendum on far-reaching political reform. The opposition and the West rejected this as too little, too late, judging covert support to be more potent than resolutions and events likely to conclude with the president’s overthrow.

This is not guaranteed.  The Syrian regime may yet prove more effective than Libya’s at suppressing the unrest and remaining in power.

We supported the resolution as we should have.

If the opposition prevails, there will be a need for a peacekeeping presence, probably a mixed UN-Arab League force – UN for global legitimacy and effective hardware, Arab League for regional legitimacy and cultural-linguistic affinity.

If the existing regime prevails, it will probably not accept either force, unless that is the only condition of its survival.  And it is highly unlikely that either the UN or the regional body would be prepared to shore up the regime.  Yet an entrenched regime might ask for Russian-Iranian military presence.  This would heat up the region, with Israel and NATO-member Turkey next door, as the recent reaction to the docking of Iranian warships in Tartus, Syria has shown.

Is there a lesson here? It’s back to the effectiveness of the Security Council in a crisis.  The veto needs to be constrained.

New Zealand should vigorously pursue that as part of a general package of UN reform.  I have called in the Foreign Affairs Committee for an enquiry into UN reform. We have a bit to offer in that area as a founding member state, one that has served in the Council several times with the hope  of re-election in 2014.

But nothing is simple.  Even if the Council were united, there is no guarantee that Syria would have experienced a peaceful transition to multi-party democracy.

Lesson no. 2.  Crises of this kind will only be avoided when all member states have achieved a minimum of stability through enduring legitimacy.  And the precondition of that is a genuine respect for the human rights in the two covenants – economic and social as much as civil and political.

For how long has the international community, including the West and including New Zealand, acquiesced in repressive regimes?  And does this not have implications for NZ policy towards Fiji?

Lesson no. 3. There is too much of a tendency for major powers to engage in competitive diplomacy – sending in national envoys with ‘the best of intentions’.  National interests can never be eschewed in these situations.  The leadership should always be taken by the UN Secretary-General, who should have appointed an envoy some months back. And who should be prepared to put his reputation on the line through personal diplomacy himself.

So much depends on the leadership qualities of the UN’s leader.