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Zimbabwe sanctions vetoed at UN

A draft resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and a number of his key allies has been vetoed at the UN Security Council.

China and Russia both rejected the proposed measures, including a freeze on their financial assets and travel.

There has been growing international criticism of Zimbabwe since the re-election of Mr Mugabe in a run-off boycotted by the opposition.

Several council members had previously expressed reservations about sanctions.

The South African ambassador to the UN had earlier argued against sanctions.

A BBC correspondent at the UN says the failure of the resolution will be a major blow for the United States and Britain.

The UK ambassador said after the vote that the UN had failed in its duty.

The resolution would have imposed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and financial and travel restrictions on President Mugabe and 13 of his top officials.

It also called for a UN special envoy for Zimbabwe to be appointed.

Leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of Zimbabwe's presidential elections on 29 March, but official results gave him less than the 50% share needed to avoid a run-off.

He pulled out of the run-off poll after many of his supporters were targeted, assaulted and even killed, leaving Mr Mugabe to win unopposed in the second round at the end of June.

Since March, the opposition says 113 of its supporters have been killed, some 5,000 are missing and more than 200,000 have been forced from their homes.

Good old UN. Can't say I'm surprised about this, particularly with Russia and China's prior support of Mugabe.

You know, I don't even get upset by this sort of thing anymore. The UN simply is never going to be able to be effective at something like this. It represents the sum total of the world's governments, good and bad, democratic and authoritarian, pluralistic and dictatorial, stringently moral and horrifically evil. It is a field for the game of international politics, and has as much capacity to be a force for morality in the world as the League of Nations before it. It is the sum of its parts.

Let the UN carry on with issuing resolutions against Israel and carrying out humanitarian missions where the constituent countries permit it to, and otherwise being largely ignored by everyone, powerful or otherwise. When the UN cannot issue a statement calling the Darfur situation 'genocide' for fear of being forced by its charter into doing something, when it fails to prevent every single war, coup, massacre, or bloodbath that it is supposed to be charged with preventing, when the biggest news story surrounding it is how many billions of dollars are stolen from its contributions for the purposes of arming rogue states or buying nice things for the families of its leaders... then this sort of thing fails to surprise me.

I used to get mad at the UN for this kind of thing, but that's just foolish. The UN isn't an entity, it's a forum, and if it is prevented from doing "its job", that's because this is not its job. To get angry with the UN for not stopping or sanctioning Zimbabwe is like getting mad at the World Trade Center's security staff for failing to prevent 9/11. It would be lovely if they could do something about it, but the base fact is that they can't, they never could, and the fiction that they ever stood a chance of accomplishing one positive thing in a situation like this is just that.

Whatever the charter says, this sort of thing isn't the UN's job. They need to go back to rescuing Abu Symbal or repackaging aid supplies for typhoon victims. Things like this are simply outside their power to do.

It represents the sum total of the world's governments, good and bad, democratic and authoritarian, pluralistic and dictatorial, stringently moral and horrifically evil.

The Security Council is not in any way a sum of all governments. It's quite limited in who can play, but unfortunately, China and Russia have veto power(Just as the US).

SirNitram wrote: The Security Council is not in any way a sum of all governments. It's quite limited in who can play, but unfortunately, China and Russia have veto power(Just as the US).

I was referring primarily to the General Assembly, but to take your example, the Security Council is not the sum of all governments, but still a pretty fair cross-section, considering how the non-permanent members are selected, and the identity of the five permanent members. It was designed to give some voice to the rest of the world, but to cement the power of the most powerful nations in the world over the UN. As the most powerful nations in the world are generally going to be rivals of one another, the system is designed to produce rivalry and discord, not uniformity and consensus. The US and the USSR waged proxy wars in the security council. The US and China now often do the same. If the Security Council is amended to add new permanent members (which is under consideration), then those new permanent members will be powerful countries like Brazil, India, Germany, or Japan, who will consequently advance their own interests by means of the Security Council to the extent that they can. Just like China does. Just like we do.

It's pointless to get upset when the UN is ineffective in cases where action does not tangentially benefit all countries in question. The UN was set up to make it impossible to do just that. We can look to many places to try and stop genocides, acts of barbarity, and outright violent shams like the recent Zimbabwe thing, but the UN is not, cannot, and never will be one of them.