Let the United Nations off the leash

Illustration by Pep Montserrat for The National

As guard dogs get old, they begin to lose their teeth. And what's the point of a guard dog that can't bite? This week, the United Nations proposed an inquiry into the incident aboard the Mavi Marmara aid ship that led to Israeli troops shooting dead nine activists. Israel, backed by America, dismissed the proposal, instead suggesting an internal inquiry within narrow parameters, which would not be able to call serving soldiers or officers, would be sufficient.

The international community has been here before, of course: last year a UN report by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during Israel's December 2008 assault on the Gaza Strip. The report failed to get much traction. Israel was outraged by the suggestion of criminality and its supporters have since been fighting a public relations campaign to de-legitimise Goldstone.

That an accusation of war crimes should be fought as a public relations campaign, rather than through an international court, says a great deal about the UN's ability to implement its will. That the suggestion of the UN secretary general to hold an inquiry into the flotilla raid can be batted away so easily by a couple of member states says as much about Ban Ki-moon's lack of authority as about the power imbalance at the Security Council.

What, one might ask, is the point of calling for an inquiry if there is no realistic chance of conducting one? Or of conducting one, if no one is listening to the answers? UN workers often grumble that they are ignored by powerful countries - yet by repeatedly taking positions without the teeth to back them up, the UN is conspiring to consign itself to irrelevance. In a sense, it is unsurprising that the UN is unfit for its purpose - it is getting old and, as the old are wont to do, has become aimless and lacking in direction. This is a big problem - but there is a small solution.

First the problem. The UN was created for a very different world: it was born in the aftermath of the Second World War and came of age during the Cold War. The victorious of the war became the Security Council, wielding vetos over what the United Nations does. Yet that world has long past. The argument for having only five permanent members is untenable. A configuration that excludes Japan and Germany, the second- and third-largest contributors to the UN, and India, the world's second most populous country, is hard to justify. The UN refers to the veto as the rule of "Great Power unanimity". But which countries can be said to wield great power has changed over the decades.

Iraq was a key post-Cold War test for the UN. It failed: it could neither resolve the Iraq issue satisfactorily, nor stop the US and Britain invading. At the time, the Bush administration repeatedly called on the UN to remain "relevant" - by doing the administration's bidding. The danger with a militarily or politically strong country is that they can simply dismiss the UN. Iraq showed a fundamental dilemma that the UN has struggled with since at least the 1970s: how to disagree with powerful member states, especially when those states payroll it. America provides 22 per cent of the UN's budget; only 10 countries fund nearly three-quarters of it. Can it literally bite the hand that feeds it?

Thus the UN always pulls in two directions - it has to pull the smaller countries along and restrain the larger ones. And that's hard to do without some sort of leash. Powerful states, such as the US and China, are happy to bulldoze over international institutions when it suits them. Smaller states, such as Iran, refuse to accept the rule of an institution dominated by its critics. These are big problems. They are compounded by the lack of a strong leader. The UN wields great moral authority and a determined secretary general can marshal that to useful effect. But Ban Ki-moon, the incumbent, is not that man. A career diplomat, Mr Ban often appears more comfortable managing consensus than leading opinion. It is not for nothing his Korean critics have called him Ban-"jusa", slang for a bureaucrat.

Proponents of a consensual secretary general point out that the leadership is not elected and thus has no moral authority to lecture elected governments. But this is misguided: the authority of the UN derives from its enforcement of its charter, which all member states have signed up to. That the charter aims to maintain peace and security and uphold international law should be the starting point for the leadership: a secretary general can be more forceful about implementing the will of the UN without stepping outside these boundaries.

Reform of the Security Council is vital. And having a leadership willing to stand up for its principles is important. Yet neither of these provides a future direction for the organisation, nor the necessary teeth to implement its will. There is a small solution. Back in 2005, under the previous secretary general Kofi Annan, the proposition was made that member countries embrace the "responsibility to protect" civilians suffering atrocities, when their own governments cannot or will not act.

This would mean, in some cases, that state sovereignty would have to yield to protecting civilians from the worst atrocities, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It could also mean intervening in countries to keep warring factions apart when there is significant danger to civilians. The UN has since adopted the language and ideas of this responsibility to protect, but has never explicitly invoked them.

R2P, as it is known, remains a useful, though radical solution. It would mean overturning the idea of national sovereignty that has held sway at the UN for decades. Coming so soon after the Iraq debacle, R2P was (and remains) controversial because it potentially provides an excuse for stronger powers to intervene in weaker states. Respect for national sovereignty is important, say critics. R2P would have allowed an Iraq invasion and many others, they argue.

Perhaps. Yet the responsibility to protect civilians caught up in conflicts is more in-keeping with the challenges the world currently faces, few of which involve sovereign states attacking each other. In the Palestine territories, the government - which government? - cannot stop the siege of Gazans; a UN with teeth could. The threat of four thousand armed international troops off the coast would at least focus minds.

In south Lebanon, a UN force could better protect civilians. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the UN has its largest peacekeeping mission, a UN military mission might have more chance of stabilising the country. Where, though, would this military come from? Current UN peace-keeping missions are hamstrung by considerations about infringement of sovereignty and by the risks that troop-contributing countries want their personnel to take.

A better solution would be to have a small force, under the command of the UN, able to react and use military might. Academics who have studied the issue have suggested it could be a volunteer force, similar to the French Foreign Legion. There are difficulties - serious difficulties - with such a proposal, the hardest of which is the conceptual framework within which UN forces could play a role. Yet these are surmountable questions and the rewards are significant. Think what a UN force, perhaps supported by national troops giving logistical support, could achieve in bringing peace to Somalia. Troops fighting under the UN's blue and white flag would carry a very different moral weight to those under a national flag.

The UN is far from perfect. Its workings are frequently opaque and it suffers from a democratic deficit. Yet the idea of a world body that guarantees international security is sound. The British used to say that they did not want to be the world's policeman; the Americans say it still. Having a body that protects populations from serious harm is essential in a state - and vital among many. The responsibility to protect will not solve all the world's problems, nor all the woes of the UN. It would not solve the current Iran crisis nor the stand-off on the Korean peninsula. But it doesn't need to; there is old fashioned diplomacy for that.

A small military force under UN command, with clear parameters, would mean that, on occasion, the UN can say what it means softly and have a big stick to carry it through. That is no small thing for many of the most beleaguered people of the world and may make the UN relevant again. Faisal al Yafai is a journalist. He received the Ibn Battuta Award for Media in London this spring and is a Churchill Fellow for 2009/2010