By Andrea Charron, PhD
It is not unusual that Canada, along with 69 other states, would think to invoke the UN General Assembly’s Uniting for Peace Resolution to deal with the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. After all, it, along with France, Philippines, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay provided the draft text of the Uniting for Peace resolution to the Fifth Session of the General Assembly on October 7, 1950 at a time when the Soviet veto had blocked the UN Security Council’s ability to continue to address the 1950 Korean War.
The Uniting for Peace Resolution (A/RES/377V) was adopted on November 3, 1950 with a vote of fifty-two in favor, five against (USSR and its 4 satellites), two abstentions (Argentina and India) and one nonvote by Lebanon. The resolution calls on the General Assembly to make recommendations on matters of international peace and security when the Security Council is unable to because of a lack of unanimity.
In paragraph 1 it states:
The General Assembly . . .
- Resolves that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security. If not in session at the time, the General Assembly may meet in emergency special session within twenty-four hours of the request therefor. Such emergency special session shall be called if requested by the Security Council on the vote of any seven [now nine] members, or by a majority of the Members of the United Nations. (emphasis added)
Canada’s latest letter to the President of the General Assembly calling for it to consider the situation in Syria is laudable. Really, however, one wonders why the General Assembly waited so long to recall this important Resolution given that the wording states that the General assembly SHALL consider the matter IMMEDIATELY rather than waiting 5 years. The Uniting for Peace Resolution could have been raised many of the Septembers/Octobers when the General Assembly was sitting. Instead, the Secretary-General will have to call on the President of the Assembly to call a special meeting.
The Uniting for Peace resolution has been invoked at least 16 times. The creation of two peacekeeping missions – UNEF I in 1956 (Suez Crisis) and ONUC (the Congo) in 1960- were the result of the Uniting for Peace Resolution. Other cases include establishing a commission of inquiry (Hungary 1956), calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Jordan and Lebanon (1958), requesting an advisory opinion of the ICJ on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory (1997) as well as a number of voluntary sanctions measures. All of the measures called for in these cases were either short of force or force but only in the case of self or collective defence and not in cases like Syria in which war crimes are taking place. As flexible as the Charter is, if the Assembly recommends that States use force outside of an Article 51 (right of self-defence) context, States are still not relieved of their obligation under Article 2(4) requiring States to refrain from the use of force “against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…” . This of course does means that Canada and/or others can ignore Article 2(4) and take measures unilaterally as was the case of NATO action in Kosovo in 1999. Given, however, that the US and Russia are at loggerheads, pushing for a robust intervention could very well pit Russia and the US against one another directly – a situation which the Charter expressly seeks to avoid. As deplorable as the situation is in Syria, no good comes if the great powers go to war against one other. Likewise, kicking Syria out of the UN will serve little purpose and may have the unintended consequence of pushing Russia into a corner for which it will feel it has no choice but to come out swinging.
In early December 2016 Canada again pushed the General Assembly to meet in an Emergency session to discuss Syria…expectations regarding the concerted action that could be taken to stop the killing in Aleppo are very low.