Reform of the United Nations and
Japan Joins the Unite Nations Security Council
by Katsumi SUGIYAMA
Member of Research
Committee, DRC
Introduction
It has been 56 years since the United Nations was established and reform of the United Nations has been considered for the last 10 years. The United Nations was created to maintain peace and harmony among global societies and moreover, to achieve peace among mankind. While the Cold War has ended, racial, tribal, anti-governmental and religious conflicts are increasingly in many parts of the World. Although, presence of the United Nations has been a very important one for the last 55 years after World War II, it is the time to overhaul the United Nations.
In this article, while understanding debates of reforming the United Nations at the Millennium Summit, I would like to mention that Peace Keeping Operations are the main force of intervention for international conflicts and that the role in which the Self-Defense Forces of Japan played in the Peace Keeping Operations. I also like to mention what should be the key point in reforming UN Security Council in order to enhance the role of PKO and what would be the important point for increasing numbers of permanent members of Security Council which is responsible for international Security.
1. Purpose of the Millennium Summit
(1) The Millennium
Summit
As a result of the three-day discussion, starting September 6, 2000, by the leading heads of state concerning the role of the UN in the twentieth century, they unanimously agreed with the Millennium Proclamation on September 8, 2000.
The Millennium Proclamation consists of 32 articles under 8 chapters. The goals for the twentieth century are ①”Value and Principle”, ②”Peace and Security”, ③”Economic Development and the Eradication of Poverty”, ④”Enforcement of the UN”, ⑤”protection of the Defenseless”, ⑥”Democracy and Human Rights”, ⑦”Aiding Africa”, ⑧”Environmental Protections”[１] At the end of the Summit meeting, they came to the decision that the UN General Assembly is to oversee these objectives. The Millennium Proclamation is aimed to solve general problems of global societies.
At the closing of the summit, they decided that the UN General Assembly would oversee the process of these goals. The Millennium Proclamation is ultimately to solve the problems of global societies. To achieve these goals depends largely upon the cooperation of developed nations and major countries throughout the World. In actuality, it is very difficult to attain. In order to fulfill the all eight chapters of the proclamation, they require ①strong leadership,②sufficient financial resources, and ③high level technological support.
①and② are relatively easy to attain by participation of the major developed nations. The problem lies on obtaining ａ strong leadership.
In January 1992, the first meeting is held by 15 heads of state of the UN Security Counsel to determine the role of the UN in the New World Order after the cold war came to an end. It was the UN Security Council summit. At the end of the summit, the chairman announced that the members agreed to extend their responsibilities over the collective security structure and to strength the UN functions for the preventive diplomacy, peace making and peace keeping operations as well as to emphasize the importance of armaments control, arms reduction and the non proliferation of arms.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary General of the UN, at that time, issued a report titled “An Agenda for Peace”[２]. Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s report emphasized the implementation of a peace enforcing unit to settle disputes, but that was found unsuitable for civil wars. Hence, they kept the conventional peace keeping operation instead.
Due to the failure to adopt the peace enforcing unit, the ＵＮ Security Council Summit, which was held on September 7, 2000, pledged that they would further develop peace keeping operations. The following are the main measures that they adopted at the summit.
①The core operation of the UN is to re-enforce and to improve the
functions of peace keeping operations.
②Improve the efficacy in every step of the prevention of conflicts
and building peace.
③The UN Security Councils select tasks which are clear and
attainable.
④Ensure the main purpose of the UN and make effective implementation
in order to secure the safety of civilians.
⑤The main factor of the peace keeping operations is to have
sufficient training and be well equipped.
⑥Improve the emergency readiness of PKO.
⑦Re-examine the recommendations of the UN Peace Security Council.
⑧Prevent an influx of small arms to areas of conflict.
⑨Facilitate AIDS prevention measures for PKO personal.
According to the above pledge, the UN enforced the presence of PKO, with the exception of ⑦, the rest of the pledged articles depend on UN financial supports.
(3) The UN’s Financial Troubles and Delinquent Payments of UN Dues
UN dues are an allotment fee that each UN member plays to cover its general expenses according to an ability of each member nation. In the past, economically developed nations have paid a large portion of the free. In accordance with the decision the allotment committee made at the UN general Assembly in September 1994, the amount due that each nation pays is calculated by the mean of the past seven years (1986～1992) and eight years (1985～1992) of the GOP of each nation. As a result, Japan pays 17.981％ of the general expenses in 1998, 19.984％ in 1999, and 20.573％ in 2000. The US pays the maximum allotment of 25％ and is demanding a reduction of the maximum allotment. The five nation members of the UN Security Council were paying 71％ of the total expenses since the beginning of the UN and the amount in the 2000s came down to 39％.
Currently, the total delinquent due has climbed up to 3.5 billion Dollars. Budget allocations are 1.3 billion dollars for the general budget, 2.1 billion for the peace keeping operation budget and 31.8 million dollars for the international criminal court. The Ｕ.Ｓ. owes nearly 2/3 of the total delinquent dues. The reasons that the Ｕ.Ｓ. is not paying up its dues are as follows; while many new nations are joining the UN, many of them are developing nations and are behind their dues. There is a structural problem of being overgrown and inefficient. Moreover, small contributing nations have the same voting right as large contributors and the large contributing nation’s agenda is not adopted.
2. Concept and Development of the PKO
(1) The UN
Forces
“The UN forces” are not in the UN Charter. This is because they change their meaning under different times and circumstances. First of all, the UN Charter, Chapter７, mentions forces that are to be sent to an area where forces can calm a conflict. The UN does not own the forces. The forces are provided by participating nations according to the specific agreement. The UN has never deployed forces in the past.
Secondly, there ware the UN forces organized during the Korean War. At that time,16 nations including the U.Ｓ.Participated, according to the advice of the Security council, while the Soviet Union was absent. They were called the UN forces.
Thirdly, there are UN forces sent by participating nations for peace keeping operations to supervise a cease-fire operation, but not to fight. They are called the Peace Keeping Forces. Since the UN directly controls them, they called the UN forces.
After the Cold War ended, the UN Peace Keeping Operation’s Activities had greatly increased. They were deployed, not only for observing a ceased-fire, but also for other broad roles such as observing elections, humanitarian support, and restoring order to a nation. Consequently, the number of people who were deployed for these causes increased by over 10,000. Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s, the Secretary General at that time, seized the opportunity to create ”The UN stand-by forces”, but it was voted down.
“The UN standby arrangement unit” was born in place of “The UN standby forces" and it was officially adopted by 87 nations on December 1999. Currently, 24 nations are in agreement with the UN[３].
The main purpose of the unit is that the member nations have prior agreement with the UN so that they can swiftly provide military and civilian personnel when the UN requests. All the personnel, services and equipment, etc., are registered in the database and they are ready anytime when UN may need them.
(2) The UN Peace Keeping Operations
The origin of the UN Peace Keeping Operations is that the UN Emergency Forces were sent to Suez disturbances in 1956 and successfully controlled the chaos. Hence, the operations are called “peace keeping”. There is no particular definition applied to peace keeping, but it refers to UN operations where certain military operations are sent and stationed in an area to bring an impartial and neutral settlement to a conflict. The military operations are deployed according to the request and agreement made by the UN member nations. In the place of the Security Council which cannot deploy the collective security, peace keeping forces and military observers are very important systems to prevent the worsening of a conflict.[4]
Two kinds of military operations are used for the peace keeping activities in the UN. One is “the peace keeping forces” which is a unit consisting of over 1,000 people provided by the UN member nations. They are equipped with small firearms and their main purpose is to observe and direct armies to maintain seize-fire and truce between opposing armies as well as disarming the armies. In Japan, we call them the Peace Keeping Forces. The PKO are allowed to have small firearms as long as they use them only for self defense.
“The Military Observer Group” is another group in the PKO. It is a military specialist group consisting of high-level military officers who are sent from the UN member nations. The group is made of two or three to a few hundred officers. Their tasks are to observe cease-fires, violations and inspections, but they do not carry any firearms.[５]
In order to carry out their tasks, they need to meet three conditions, which are to obtain a prior agreement of the country concerned, keep neutrality and not to use firearms. After the Cold War ended, PKO activities were greatly increased and there were 36 incidents in ten years before 2000.
(3) The Self Defense Forces of Japan and PKO
In June 1992, the Japanese government established ”the rules to assist the UN Peace Keeping Operations－the PKO Assistance Act” and we began to provide manpower to the UN Peace Keeping Operations. Nonetheless, the Japanese National Diet froze the idea of sending any manpower to assist the UN Peace Keeping Operations. In the case of the Japanese defense forces joining the PKO, they created “5 basic rules of participation” to maintain some control over the matter. They are ①a cease fire agreement must exist, ②the country must agree to accept the forces, ③be neutral, ④in the case that ① to ③ could not be met, all cooperation would be ceased, and ⑤ the Japanese defense forces are to use the minimum of its arms.
Forces that Japan has sent in the past for PKO are UNTAC, ONUMOZ, UNAVEM-Ⅱ, ONUSAL and UNDOF. In June 1998, PKO collaboration rules were revised due to changes in UN PKO activities. Among the changes are rules regarding sending personnel to supervise elections, material assistance and the usage of arms.
The turning point when ordinary Japanese citizens noticed the importance of the meanings and contributions to PKO activities was when Japan joined the UNTAC (the UN Temporary Administration of Cambodia). UNTAC was established by the UN Security Council in February 1992, which gives 7 responsibilities to the PKO. They are protection of human rights, management and supervision of elections, taking military actions、administrative controls, maintaining law and order, repatriating refugees and resettlement, and restoration. Japan participated in restoration, management and the supervision of elections. The restoration works done by the Japan defense forces in Cambodia were highly recognized internationally, as well as by the Cambodian people.
Consequently, Japanese citizens realized the importance of PKO’s contributions to the world communities. Afterwards, Japan has sent 45 delegates every year since January 1996 to help with transportation duties under UNDOF at the Golan Heights. Japanese delegates were asked to participate in the joint firearms training of individual UNDOF troops. The Japanese delegates joined the training, which would help the Japanese defense forces for combat readiness.
Japan contributed 40 billion-yen and 1,200 personnel from the Japanese defense forces for the successful Cambodian restoration. Japan has been giving out 200 billion to 300 billion yen to China every year for the last 20 years. As a result, China raised a strong anti-Japanese policy instead of their gratitude; therefore, Japan should cut off ODA to China immediately and given the money to the five different nations who are struggling after their civil wars.
3. Strengthen the UN and Conditions for Peace
(1) Reform the
UN Security Council
Since the beginning of the UN Security Council, five nations which are the United States of America, England, France, Russia and China are the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations and have veto power. At the UN General Assembly held in February 1992, many member nations requested in writing that the UN Security Council needs to reform to meet current World situations.
All member nations agree to add Japan and Germany to the existing five nations[６], but they disagreed as to who would be the additional nation. This would have the affect of increasing the quorum for the non-permanent members of the Security Council (current members are 10 nations). Since the UN is a World organization, they need to consider an even representation of each area of the World so that the core members are not all from one area.
For the reasons above, some want to get permanent members from Asia, South America and Africa, but there is a clash of opinions between the permanent members who want to keep the veto power and who want to change the system. It will be hard to come an agreement in the near future.
The US wants to increase the number of non-permanent members of the UN Security Council from current 10 nations to 16 nations and Japan wants 19 nations, while African nations want 21 nations. Currently, they are trying to get an agreement. The problem of reforming the UN Security Council is that they need to revise the UN Charter that requires unanimous agreement of all member nations（Chapter 108 of the UN Charter）.
(2) Reforming the UN and Voting Problems
The UN secretary general, Kofi A. Annan, presented a message titled “The role of the UN in the twenty-first century” at the Millennium Summit in April 2000. He dedicated a chapter just for “the reform of the UN”. In the chapter, he mentioned reforming the UN Security Council and emphasized the strong need for change in the composition of the permanent membership system to reflect the needs of global changes.
Reflecting the Kofi Annan’s message, all the heads of states discussed and adopted unanimously “The Millennium Proclamation” at the Millennium Summit held at the headquarters of the UN in September 2000. In the last chapter of the proclamation, ”Strengthening the UN”, they emphasized the reforming of the UN Security Counsel. As a result, the members at the general assembly discussed the overall reform of the system of the UN and consequently, five working committees such as “The Security Council Reform” and “Strengthening the UN systems” were created.
The main purpose of “The UN System Working Committee” is to study suggestions and reports concerning the revitalization, strengthening and reforming of all the system of the UN and to come up with a workable plan. They started the discussion of reforming the general assembly and the executive office.
The issues, which were pointed out at the Millennium Summit, were concerned with peace, the deduction of armaments, development, property, environment protection, the UN finance, human rights, aids to Africa and reform of the UN Security Council. These issues are closely connected with finance issues. All of these issues are discussed by the working committee, Security Council and/or the general assembly. When all discussion is done and the results are in, the members vote on the issue. Generally, they vote by a raising of hands or by an automated push button system. If one of the member nations requests“a roll call”,they vote by ａ roll call. The chairman begins calling each nation alphabetically starting from the nation which was picked by drawing. The delegate of the member nation answers ”Yes”, “No” or “No Vote”. The manner of each delegate is recorded.
The second method of voting is “decision by consensus” which was adopted in 1964. Consensus agreement means that they reached “the general agreement” and there is “no official disagreement” from the floor. This is not done by voting. When the chairman presents a proposal and there is no opposition from the floor, the resolution is adopted. In The case of decision by consensus, there must be a concession of opinions by putting the proposal through informal meetings and getting most of the decisions by networking before the proposal gets on the general assembly floor for a vote. Currently, this method is adopted by most of the international organizations, the UN General Assembly, and the UN Security Council.
The third method of voting is the “weighted voting system”. With this method, different numbers of votes are given according to the power of the nation and the degree of its contribution to international organizations. Originally, all the organizations in the UN voted one vote to one nation, but some of the organizations are concerned with money such as the world banking group and the international currency foundation. The number of votes each member has is based on the amount of monetary contribution they make. The European federation bases its votes on population. Various international commodity councils base their votes on the production and export volume, or the consumption and importing volume.
As the number of member nations from when the UN was founded, started to increase in the 1960’s due to the many newly independent countries from Asia and Africa beginning to join the UN, advanced nations such as theＵ.Ｓ. could not pass their opinions and points easily. Moreover, since the Fourth Middle Eastern War started, oil producing Arab countries began to oppose all of the politics of the developed nations by exercising their oil strategy. All the developed nations who are experiencing shortages of energy, minerals and agricultural resources have been forced to change their industrial nations’ superiority policy to include the policies of developing nations.
Many underdeveloped nations attained their independence and joined the UN. But most of them bungled the process of becoming independent nations and are still struggling with economic and civil war problems: therefore, they are still in need of economic help from developed nations and cannot pay their share of expenses owed to the UN and PKO.
All the members have one vote for one nation and many underdeveloped nations vote against proposals and claims presented by the Ｕ.Ｓ.; therefore, the Ｕ.Ｓ.Does not like “the one vote for one nation” system. When votes are for financial decisions, the UN needs to adopt the weighted voting system. The Ｕ.Ｓ. withdrew from UNESCO and the weighted voting system was considered to be adopted for the financial decision making, because the Ｕ.Ｓ. was not getting the votes they wanted on the floor. In recent times, there is the tendency of “a no money but a big mouth” theory where only the ideas of the underdeveloped nations have passed due to their numbers.
(3) Japan, Germany, India, Brazil and Egypt Must Join the UN Security Council
The UN General budget for 2000 to 2001 is approximately ＄2,536 million and the following are the rates of allotment for each nation, ①Ｕ.Ｓ.; 25.00％, ②Japan; 20.573％, ③Germany; 9.857％, ④France; 6.545％, ⑤Italy; 5.437％. This clearly States that these advanced nations pay a large portion of the budget and that Japan shares one of the highest shares. Moreover, Japan gives ＄97 million to the PKO’s allotment, which is the highest share. The allotment shared among the five member nations of the UN Security Council who have veto power, are Russia; 1.49％ and China; 0.97％.
When one analyzes the present five member nations of the UN Security Council, all possess nomadic characters. They are very keenly territorial. According to the theory of Dr. Tetsuro Watsuji, who was a philosopher of tribal study and was active during the Taisho and Showa eras. His theory is that Nomadic people make decisions calmly by assessing the situation and face the matter realistically but with animalistic cruelty and that they are adventurous and ambitious.[７] Looking back at the history of the nations in America, Europe, Middle East and China, there were large imperialistic nations who fought in the area for several thousands of years. They are the Persian, Roman, Shin,Ｋan, Saracen, Sui and Tang, Ottoman, Mongolian, Ming, Spanish, British, Russia, Hapsburg, French, Chin empires and the Soviet Union and the United States of America.
On the other hand, according to Dr. Watsuji, the rice farming tribes are passive, receptive and calm under the rule of other nations. They do explode when they reach their limit. When examining the history and character of the rice farming tribes who are East Indians and Indonesians. They have lived under the strong colonialism of Chinese Empires, European and American nations for a long time. On the other hand, Dr. Watsuji theorizes, the Japanese are rice farming tribes and fit the typhoon type；when they reach the limit of their patience, they explode and nothing can subdue them, but they calm down later and become almost docile. The attack from Mongolia, the Japan－China War the Japan－Russia War and the War with the Ｕ.Ｓ. (World War II) are examples of situations Japan experienced in her history.
The present member nations of the UN Security Council all belong to nomadic tribes who are very territorial by nature; therefore, there are always wars somewhere in the world. Now, it is very important to include in the reform of the UN Security Council that we need to invite some nations or rice farming tribes to become permanent members of the Council. The economically great nation of Japan and the nation of India representing a huge population should be invited. The big contributing nation, Germany, a large nation of Brazil representing South America and Egypt representing Africa need to be invited to be permanent members of the UN Security Council [８].
Conclusion
At the conclusion of this article, the most significant point for reforming the UN Security Council is that currently, no idea can pass in the UN Security Council unless every member of the five nations (permanent members) agrees. In the case of Japan, she faithfully kept peaceful diplomacy and has a constitution that does not involve her in any war. Moreover, she has avoided all things concerning war by maintaining three principles of a non-nuclear nation and three principles of exporting weapons. Japan totally depends on the Ｕ.Ｓ. for her security; there is the treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the Ｕ.Ｓ. where the Ｕ.Ｓ. Armed forces are to stay in Japan. So far, Japan has avoided invasion from other nations, but China and North Korea dislike the security treaty and think it is an obstacle; therefore, at very opportunity they get, they oppose any plans that Japan presents.
China is the only nation who vetoes a recommendation of selecting Japan as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. As long as unanimous votes are required to pass the UN Security Council, Japan cannot join the permanent members of the UN Security Council [９]. Under current situations, when nations except China want Japan to join the permanent members of the UN Security Council, they need to amend the UN Charter. Furthermore, I disagree that as a condition to become the permanent member of the UN Security Council, a nation must participate in the world corrective security forces, which is also one of the recent topics concerning amendment of the Japanese Constitution.
As a part of reforming the UN Security Council, there is a complaint of too many staff working for the UN. Japan has 100 people currently working for the UN while her quota is 200 to 300 people. Some see this as a negative contribution on Japan’s part [10]. The problem of under staffing is that people have a hard time finding a job after serving at the UN. In this case, Japanese government needs to facilitate the job finding task. At the same time, the Japanese government needs to take better care of personnel working for our Self Defense Forces.
[１] The United Nations Information Center, “The
United Nations Millennium General Assembly, The United Nations Millennium
Summit”, December 2000, PP.５～13
[２] Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace:
in An Agenda for Peace 1995, New York: United Nations, 1995
[３] UN Standby Arrangements System Description:
Department of Peace Keeping Operations Mission Planning Service, Update
Briefing to Member States on Standby Arrangements Unit, November４, 1998
[４] Shigeru Kouzai, “UN Peace Keeping
Operations”, Yuhikaku, 1991. PP.51～82
[５] Kiyotaka Kawabata, Shigeru Mochida, “New
Era of PKO”, Iwanami Bookstore, 1997. P.20
[６] For example, Australian working paper
clearly supports Japan and Germany to join the permanent members of the UN
Security Council Expansion：Non-Permanent
Membership and the Numbers, Australia: working paper page 52, presented on
March 27, 1996. Previously issued as Ａ/AC. 247/1996/CR, P.16
[７] Tetsuro Watsuji, ”Climate”, Iwanami
Bookstore, 1979
[８] Reform of the Security Council, Norway:
working paper, P.74 Presented on March 25, 1996. Previously issued as Ａ/AC. 247/1996/CR, P.19
[９] Kouichiro Yamazaki, “Recent Movement of UN:
Field Report”, “Role of UN and View”, Japanese UN Society, Kokusai-shoin, March
2000, P.306
[10]
Takao Hatano, “The Twenty-first Century and UN System”, “Role of UN and View”,
Kokusai-shoin, March 2000, P.183
