Criticism of the United Nations
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In 2009, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, along with other non-religious artists, authors and entrepreneurs, wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter stressing the importance of secularity. The group also criticised the UN for its stance on blasphemy laws." --Sholem Stein "The fact that in 2017 Saudi Arabia was elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women despite its conflict with women's rights, earned the United Nations much criticism." --Sholem Stein |
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Criticism of the United Nations has encompassed numerous arguments regarding various aspects of the organization, such as policy, ideology, equality of representation, administration, ability to enforce rulings, and ideological bias.
Attention given to the Arab-Israeli conflict
Issues relating to the state of Israel, Palestinians and other aspects of the Arab–Israeli conflict occupy a large amount of debate time, resolutions and resources at the United Nations. The former Secretary of State of the United States, John Kerry, has accused the U.N. Human Rights Council of focusing disproportionately on allegations of abuses by Israel, and Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, admitted that there is a biased attitude against Israel at the UN, although he retracted later. Other critics such as Dore Gold, Alan Dershowitz, Mark Dreyfus, Robert S. Wistrich, Alan Keyes, and the Anti-Defamation League also consider UN attention on Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be excessive.
According to Wistrich, "a third of all critical resolutions passed by [the UN] Human Rights Commission during the past forty years have been directed exclusively at Israel. By way of comparison, there has not been a single resolution even mentioning the massive violations of human rights in China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Zimbabwe."
The adoption of UNSCOP's recommendation to partition Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 was one of the earliest decisions of the UN. According to political commentator Alan Dershowitz, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the UN defined the term "refugee" as applied to Palestinian Arabs fleeing Israel in significantly broader terms than it did for other refugees of other conflicts.
In 2007, United Nations Human Rights Council president Doru Romulus Costea said that the UNHRC had "failed" in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The UN has sponsored several peace negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, the latest being the 2002 Road map for peace. The controversial Resolution 3379 (1975), which equated Zionism with racism, was rescinded in 1991. According to Robert S. Wistrich, "on the same day Resolution 3379 was adopted, the General Assembly decided to establish the 'Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.' With a large budget at its disposal and acting as an integral part of the United Nations, it has for more than thirty years done everything within its power to establish a Palestinian state in place of Israel."
See also
- Criticism of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
- Criticism of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
- Criticism of UNICEF
- Defamation of religion and the United Nations
- Haiti cholera outbreak
- Nicaragua v. United States
