January 27, 2006
Union of Independent Nations (UIN)
Muzaffar Iqbal
Those who conceived and established the United Nations had an agenda: to legitimize their political, economic, and cultural gains in the post-World War II era through an international organization and to perpetuate the colonial through a new mechanism. The United Nations has been quite successful in achieving these goals. Its success, however, has produced a legacy of injustice, corruption, and crimes against humanity incomparable to any other period in human history. This legacy of the United Nations is inseparable from such crimes as the legitimization of illegitimate states, sanctioning global policies which solely benefit such multi-national corporations which were multinational only in the sense of their shareholders being nations of the North, and the perpetuation of an unjust global economic order. This injustice was built into and perpetuated by the very organizational structure of the UN—the organization which originated in the minds of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin who met at Yalta on February 11, 1945 to discuss their plans to establish this organization.
It should not require a sound mind years of research into the background of these men to conclude that they only had the good of their own countries in mind and not the rights of the poor whose lands and resources were being ruthlessly used for the rapid economic growth of the countries of the North. They considered the world to be made of “civilized” and “rich” countries of the North and the “uncivilized” and “poor” countries of the South. They viewed humanity as consisting of those who had a birthright to rule and those who needed to be ruled because they could not govern themselves. This racial, cultural, and civilizational inequality was built into the UN Charter: certain states were given certain rights which could not be granted to others; certain organs of the UN were only open to certain states; all offices of the so-called international organization had to be located in the North; the tasks of drafting resolutions, setting up of agendas, and other key functions were to remain perpetually in the hands of Northern states. The working mechanism was made so that the countries of the South could only discuss, vote, and complain about matters which were set for such purposes by the few chosen states and if any “poor” and “uncivilized” country wanted to breach this “norm”, there were built-in mechanisms to deal with it. All of this can be ascertained from the governing by-laws and the history of this organization. But is humanity bound to its structure and its whims?
There have been efforts in the past to establish an alternate to the UN. The Bandung Conference (April 18-24, 1955) was called to establish such an organization, but its declared purpose of “promoting Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and of opposing colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other imperialistic nation” was successfully neutralized by the United States and the Soviet Union, and it now belongs to the dustbin of history. Other regional organizations established to weaken the global range of UN authority have also remained inconsequential.
This situation is, however, changing rapidly. A new awareness about the plight of humanity is spreading throughout the world. This development is still not visible in many countries of Asia, the Middle East, and African—where political and social movements have been successfully rendered inoperative and inconsequential by the client regimes now in power—but its early expressions can be easily found in many countries of South America. This is not surprising as South America has always been ahead of other former colonies in its awareness of social, economic, and political realities of the post-colonial era, and it has consistently produced bold and revolutionary leadership in the intellectual, literary, and political realms. In order for this new social and political movement to mature and produce a more long-term impact on the state of the world, it needs to be institutionalized.
Imagine the impact on the United Nations of the departure of even twenty countries from its fold! And if these countries were to establish a parallel organization, it would rapidly attract public support and, in time, such a organization of really independent nations will become a real alternative to the United Nations. One possible name for this new international body is Union of Independent Nations (UIN).
The idea of a Union of Independent Nations is not as impractical as it may seem. After all, there is widespread and increasing awareness about the horrendous crimes committed by the colonial rulers in colonized lands; there is also the awareness that neo-colonialism and imperialism are the two most devastating processes of our times and there is massive support for finding an alternate to the unjust world order established by the countries of the North. This past week (Jan. 24, 2006), more than 67,000 men, women and children registered for the sixth World Social Forum to express just such feelings. The Forum began in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and then moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez addressed the gathering. Participants ranged from Ecuadorean Indians in their traditional shawls to Brazilian students buying Che Guevara T-shirts and bracelets, watches and posters printed with Chavez's image, to men and women from Mali and Bolivia.
In fact, it seems now only a matter of time before such massive public gatherings against the political, economic, and cultural exploits of the countries of the North turn into some kind of international organization, as the need is in the air. More and more people are realizing that the unjust political and economic world orders that exist today are actually sanctioned and institutionalized through international bodies such as the United Nations. It is also becoming clear to those who are conscious of the ways in which global political and economic processes take place that no single country can break the shackles of the global terrorism being perpetuated by the countries of the North. The most logical result of these realizations is the establishment of an international body parallel to the United Nations.
UIN, with its headquarters in the South, can be formed by just twenty states who would quit the UN; once established, this would start the construction of a new world order. If, for example, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, South Africa, and Iran were to take an initiative in this respect, the world could readily change within a decade.
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