NEW DELHI, Jan 9:
Though international laws and the institutions created to further its influence and application have grown significantly over the last six decades, International Law is at the crossroads and needs new direction, Vice-President Hamid Ansari said today.
Speaking after inaugurating the World Congress on International Law on the theme “Relevance of International Law”, the Vice-President said, “Although international laws and the institutions created to further its influence and application have grown significantly over the last six decades, International Law is at the crossroads and needs new direction.” “Its ambit has grown from interstate relations to individual rights and now covers civil society and corporations apart from State conduct,” he said.
“It extends to the Global Commons and attempts to address new challenges being posed by new technologies, non-state actors, unhindered information and financial flows. While it is trying to cope with transnational concerns relating to pandemics, narcotics, illegal trafficking in human beings and arms, it cannot escape addressing some fundamental issues,” Dr Ansari maintained.
Addressing the Congress, organised by the Indian Society of International Law (ISIL), the Vice-President said the nature of the State was today being called into question. “Today, several parts of the world are engulfed by crises of identity, political control and stability. The nation-state system is under strain, prompted by geo-political, short term strategic compulsions and radicalised non-state actors. Colonial geographies have begun to dismantle,” he said, adding, “Military interventions in established nation states have led to instability and to the growth of sectarian and ethnic discord.” The Vice-President said, “Non-state actors, of different ideological persuasions, have violated borders and sovereignty at will. Some of these transgressions have received support from other powers and nation states.”
Noting that the years since the Second World War have eroded the effectiveness of the United Nations and its institutions, Dr Ansari today stressed on the need for reforms in the UN. “The power structure of the Organisation created in 1945 clearly reflected the power realities of the world after the Second World War. It was dominated by the victors of the Second World War who fashioned its modalities to further and facilitate the pursuit of power in political and economic terms,” he said.
“Much has changed in the world since then, but the underlying realities of the power remained true. If anything the intervening years have eroded the effectiveness of the UN and its institutions, and the need for reforms has never been more urgent,” the Vice-President said.
“The world has changed, new power realities have emerged, several new regional and trans-regional groupings have come into being, but the United Nation remains largely unaltered,” Dr Ansari said.
He said, “The need for reforms is widely recognised and several halting efforts have been made to change methods of work, procedures, financing arrangements, delivery mechanisms and accountability criteria, but the outcomes have been less than satisfactory. What is required is structural and systemic reforms and that has still to happen.”
There was a growing perception that there has been a decline in multilateralism, he said.
“Developed countries have begun to look upon the UN and its functioning in terms of their own priorities and objectives. The UN’s Charter functions in the area of money, finance, trade, expenditure, indebtedness and developmental strategies have been transferred to IMF, World Bank and WTO,” he said, adding, “In these bodies the major economic powers, because of their voting power or the power of retaliation (WTO) have come to dominate the decision making in these vital areas.” In the area of development the focus is on the economic and social problems of developing countries and their internal governance issues.
Here too, in the name of globalisation, the thrust is on the open market, foreign investment, lowering tariffs and reducing the role of the State.
The UN’s method of functioning has also changed from being a negotiating forum on hard economic issues, where substantive legally bidding commitments were undertaken, it has increasingly become a forum for the exchange of views and where experts are invited to conduct dialogues and analyse global economic and social trends.
“The Vice-President also released online edition of the Journal of ISIL on the occasion. (UNI)
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