ROLES OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS - UN AND COUNTERTERRORISM

When international organizations and institutions are brought under discussion, questions spring to mind about their inception, policy determinants, influence factors and decision-making mental images and other current and urgent questions.

An international organization is established for various reasons, including the occurrence of a political, economic or health crisis in the world, or in one region. As such, a country, government, or group of countries takes the initiative to propose the establishment of an institution or organization to confront a given crisis. The goal is often to achieve a global interest, and sometimes to achieve the special interests of the states or governments that have adopted the idea of establishing an organization. Many international or regional organizations or institutions that exist today seek to achieve the interests of specific countries, and it is one method to impose their hegemony, control, vision, and direction over the rest of the countries that are signatories to the establishment of a given organization.

The determinants of the general policy of organizations, influence methods, decision-making are set by the key countries that first established a given organization. Therefore, such an organization achieves the interests of such countries before others according to the action plan, and the method of decision-making subject to the power of influence.

One of the most important goals of establishing any organization is to form a positive mental image of the founding countries, participation, and membership. The UN is the best telling example for such organizations. It is the parent organization for all international and regional organizations and institutions, and it is the most important and largest organization in the world, both in terms of the number of member states and the number of its employees, the size of the annual budget, or the importance of the issues and affairs addressed.

The idea of establishing an international organization rose to prominence following First World War when the League of Nations was established. After the Second World War, the idea developed and took form to establish the UN to achieve and maintain world peace and avoid the outbreak of a third world war. The victors in the Second World War established the councils and bodies of the UN, and developed their work plans and policies, primarily the UN Security Council. They called themselves permanent members, and they have different rights from other members by having the right to veto the decisions of the Council. Among the key ones are the decisions presented under Chapter VII (decisions issued under Chapter VII are binding on all countries of the world), and usually the five countries agree in advance before submitting any decision.

To legitimize the Council, these five countries increased the seats of the Member States in the Council to fifteen seats, i.e., by distributing the additional ten seats to the rest of the world, so that the five members are permanent members of the Council, and the other ten are temporary members that change every two years. Usually, non-permanent membership is available to the rest of the world in the Security Council once every 15, 20 or 30 years, according to voting mechanism.

Beyond a shadow of doubt, the methodology of non-permanent membership plan is not fair, as the five permanent members achieve their interests as they like, at the expense of the other 188 countries that are all UN Members States. The non-permanent membership plan is based on a smart philosophy that the rest of the UN Member States feel valued for their presence in the Council, but the reality is not A short temporary membership achieves negligible interests; in the first year, the state learns about the nature of the Council, and in the second year it cannot achieve satisfactory results. Usually, these countries seek to win the support of the five permanent members, which can impose their preferences and interests on the temporary member states, and the situation here is like a newly born baby; no sooner does a newly born baby stand to one’s feet than it perishes.

Of great note, the Arab countries have a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which lacks the right of veto, after the Arab countries agreed more than 40 years ago not to compete for membership in the UN Security Council and approved a method to ensure that each session of the non-permanent membership in the UN Security Council is distributed among the Arab countries in Asia and Africa. The Arab countries must appreciate the importance of this seat. Had the Arab countries stood united, they would have been able to preserve many of their interests in the UN Security Council.

The next most important UN body is the UN General Assembly, which is the only body in which all the UN Member States (193 countries) have equal representation, but whose resolutions are nothing more than non-binding recommendations and suggestions.

An appropriately telling example to cite about the UN performance in addressing the issues that crop up across the world is the UN impact on counterterrorism. Discussing the UN impact is complex that produces subtle nuances of the whole gamut of feelings; it cannot be reduced to one article. It would be helpful to turn the spotlight on the key UN counterterrorism departments: the Executive Directorate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the UN Security Council Committees, which is concerned with following up on the implementation of counterterrorism resolutions issued by the United Nations through field visits and providing the necessary advice. It has an analytical support and sanctions monitoring team (Monitoring Team), which provides assistance to two Security Council committees: The Sanctions Committee on ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the Committee on Sanctions imposed on Al-Qaeda, and the Counter-Terrorism Office, which review the key counterterrorism strategy issued by the General Assembly and is reviewed by the UN states Members, updated every two years.

It is not possible to discuss the UN counterterrorism impact without highlighting the UN Counterterrorism Center, which is one of its key initiatives, and it is the only entity that assists the UN Member States in building counter-terrorism capacities. The idea of establishing the center is a telling example of the conditions and causes for the establishment of organizations previously discussed. The center was established due to an international crisis suffered by all countries of the world: extremism and terrorism.

In 2005, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia presented an initiative to establish an international counterterrorism grouping or center to best help all countries of the world. The Kingdom did not seek to achieve its own interests; it left it to the UN, the UN Member States, and the Advisory Council of the Center to set the centre’s general policies and methods of operation, even though it is the sole financier of the centre’s establishment, with more than $110 million.