On March 23, the British Ambassador to Lebanon, James Watt, inaugurated a new lecture series sponsored by the Political Studies and Public Administration Department in cooperation with the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and Public Affairs, when he gave a well-attended talk entitled “The Security Council and Change: The Future of the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes.” Followed by a lively discussion, his lecture addressed both the history of change and the new challenges facing the UN Security Council. Just as the world has changed dramatically since the end of World War II, so has the United Nations had to evolve. Sixty years ago, the Security Council began with 11 members (five permanent with the power of veto) and later expanded to 15. For many years now, there has been fervent debate about changing the composition of the Security Council and increasing the number of its permanent members. During the discussion period, in response to a question about new permanent members not getting veto power, Ambassador Watt said that the power of veto is controversial and has often made it impossible to take action, but yet it is unfeasible to try to take that power away from those who already have it. In speaking about current UN challenges, Ambassador Watt went through four new key elements in the Security Council's doctrine today: sovereignty and state responsibility, international terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the spread of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. With reference to the new doctrine of state responsibility, he brought up the example of Darfur and said cases like that raise questions about “the responsibility of those states for maintaining not only international peace, but internal peace as well and respect for fundamental human rights.” Several listeners posed questions regarding the protection of state sovereignty. His Excellency pointed out that states willingly join the UN in order to gain the rewards of collective action and, he said, “The UN Charter upholds the principle of sovereignty, but also commits member states to respect the UN's role in preserving international peace and security. This involves, to a degree, states limiting the exercise of their sovereignty.” Regarding Darfur, he said the situation there has led to resolutions that, more than in any previous case, asserted the principle of a state's “responsibility to protect”—setting this against its unlimited exercise of sovereignty, because they have failed to protect their own people, which is both fundamentally wrong and impinges on the security of neighboring states. Ambassador Watt spoke about many of the successes and failures of UN Security Council resolutions in the past and, while not cataloguing them, he described the many resolutions on the Middle East as being a “history of partial success” and “failure of implementation.” Given the topic, there were inevitably some questions concerning UN Resolution 1559. Although he noted in the beginning that he would be cautious in commenting on the current situation in Lebanon, the ambassador did say that “the Security Council took the view that Lebanese sovereignty and independence were not being adequately upheld,” and that “1559 takes great care to focus on independence and sovereignty.” Ambassador Watt concluded his talk with a comment primarily aimed at UN reform, but with a much wider relevance: “All change threatens those who think they will lose by it. But change is a constant and unavoidable reality.”
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