This article is authored by Aditya Sharma, a 5th year student of B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), at Sybmiosis Law School, Pune, India.
DATE OF PUBLICATION- 9/6/2021
The United Nations General Assembly (hereinafter ‘UNGA’) is the principal deliberative and policy-making organ of the United Nations (hereinafter ‘UN’). It constitutes of all the 193 members of the UN, and due to its operational scope, serves as its governing body. It is the only UN organ endowing equal representation to all member states, and is responsible for general coordination and supervision over the subsidiary bodies of the UN. Apart from these, the UNGA has also been instrumental in enabling and supervising the operations of the International Law Commission, UNHCR, UNDP, and UNICEF. It can also initiate studies and make recommendations to ensure resolution of conflicts and international peace, despite matters regarding threats to peace and security primarily being dealt with by the UNSC. In addition to these, the UNGA has also served as a very important forum for discussions pertaining to global disarmament.
The resolutions of the UNGA are advisory in nature. However, they are binding on internal matters such as elections and the budget. In fact, approval of budget of the UN has been regarded as the most concrete role of the UNGA. Further, by virtue of Article 10 of the UN Charter, it is empowered to pass non-binding resolutions on any matter under the purview of the UN. As most resolutions passed by the UNGA are not binding on the member states, it is pertinent to study the effects of a select few UNGA resolutions and their impact on global polity. This will provide us a qualitative insight into the efficacy of the UNGA and its resolutions. This piece principally deals with the divergent positions in the voting patterns of the members of the UNGA vis-à-vis the permanent members of the UNSC over the period between 2018 and 2020 to highlight the contrasts between the same, and strives to propose suggestions to strengthen the UNGA.
Operational Effects of UNGA and its Resolutions
The UNGA, by embodying the principle of ‘sovereign equality’ provided under Article 2 of the UN Charter, has played a tremendous role in gauging and consolidating collective consensus on a global scale. The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Millenium Declaration of 2000 are successful products of such a global consensus garnered by the UNGA. Even the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which characterised foreign rule to be a violation of human rights, is a milestone in the efforts towards decolonisation. Additionally, one of the greatest successes of the UNGA has been the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, a set of seventeen actionable and trackable global goals to be achieved by the year 2030 for a sustainable future.
Another resolution of significance is the Uniting for Peace Resolution, which enables the UNGA to propose collective measures for restoration of international peace and security in cases where the UNSC fails to discharge its duty owing to a political deadlock. This, in theory, provides the UNGA an alternative course of action to counteract the vetoes of the permanent members of the UNSC. Further, any resolution to this regard would require a two-thirds majority of the UNGA, thus holding greater moralistic legitimacy vis-à-vis the concerned UNSC position, as this would reflect the consensus of the entire global community.
Statistical Analysis of Voting Pattern at the UNGA
The operational effects of the UNGA, as summarized in the preceding section, have been largely driven by majorities secured over cross-regional coalitions of member states across the ‘North-South’ divide. The multipolar fluidity that has emerged at the present level of international political discourse has encouraged an increasing number of member states to challenge the shortcomings of the UNSC. A striking example of this shift in momentum can be observed from the discussions of the seventy-first session, where various members of the UNGA scathingly criticized the UNSC for its inaction in dealing with the Aleppo Crisis – a humanitarian crisis accentuated by the Russian involvement.
Not only in this case, but also in several other instances, the political priorities of the permanent members of the UNSC, and the other members of the UNGA have a marked discordance. This is especially true when the former’s tendency to maintain status-quo of their near-hegemonic powers is juxtaposed with the growing aspirations of the developing member-states.
To academically discern how divergence in the policy resolutions of the five permanent members of the UNSC vis-à-vis the other members of the UNGA plays out at the UNGA, it is pertinent to quantitatively evaluate the voting pattern of the member states with respect to UNGA resolutions. This review of the voting pattern is conducted by using the United Nations Digital Library database. The search criterion for this review are as follows:
The members whose voting patterns were evaluated are as follows:
The data so derived from the search criterion, is as follows:
To ensure standardization, the data presented in Table 3 has been converted into percentage, which is as follows:
To deduce a bloc-wise vote distribution, the statistical mean of the members constituting the bloc has to be derived from Table 4. This distribution is as follows:
To ascertain the existence of a voting pattern, it is pertinent to check the year-wise deviation of the bloc-wise vote distribution presented in Table 5. In other words, the difference in the vote distribution over the years has to be calculated. This deviation is as follows:
From Table 6, it can be ascertained that the deviation in bloc-wise vote distribution has only reached a maximum of three percent, thus reasonably establishing the existence of a probable voting pattern. This enables us to calculate the three-year statistical mean of the bloc-wise vote distribution presented in Table 5 to finally derive the voting pattern of the blocs. This voting pattern is as follows:
From a conjoined reading of Tables 3 through 7, the following inferences can be drawn:
The five permanent members of the UNSC, on an average, vote against nearly a fourth of all UNGA resolutions and abstain from voting in nearly a sixth of all resolutions. On the other hand, other leading members of the UNGA, on an average, vote against only a twentieth of all UNGA resolutions while abstaining from voting in nearly a sixth of all resolutions
Similarly, the five permanent members of the UNSC are 19.2% more likely to vote against a resolution vis-à-vis the other leading members of the UNGA, indicating a divergence in opinion on matters of global polity.
Other leading members of the UNGA are 20.2% more likely to vote in favour of a resolution vis-à-vis the five permanent members of the UNGA, indicating the existence of political will to challenge the shortcomings of the UNSC powers.
In essence, the data can also be said to be reflective of the tussle between the UNGA and the UNSC.
Closing Remarks
The UNGA serves as the open conscience of the world. As already seen, its multilateral forum shapes the global policy of the UN and contributes to the progress of the modernization of international law and policy. Its supervision over the various facets of the UN has endowed moralistic legitimacy to the organization’s functioning.
However, its abstruse and often divergent positions vis-à-vis the UNSC, led by its five permanent members, has hampered the execution of its policies, and by extension, its potential as the world’s leading representative assembly. In light of these inferences, the following suggestions serve as the closing remarks:
The powers of the UNGA, vis-à-vis the UNSC, must be expanded via amendments to the UN Charter, in addition to enabling the UNGA to evaluate the implementation of its resolutions to increase accountability and ensure enforcement.
Reforms, modelled and expanding on the Uniting for Peace Resolution, must be undertaken to enable the UNGA to bypass the divergence and political deadlock posed by the five permanent members of the UNSC.
To enhance and complement the representative character of the UNGA, proposals are afoot for a directly elected United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, similar in structure to the EU’s European Parliament.
Leave a Reply