THE United Nations was established to resolve disputes among nations to ensure world peace. Unfortunately, it has failed badly to achieve what it was formed for. At the time of partition of the subcontinent, India in connivance with the ruler Mahraja Hari Singh annexed Kashmir against the will of the people.

The people of Kashmir revolted and the issue led to an armed conflict between the two newly-formed countries. Pakistan lent support to the local Kashmiri population to protect its own borders and to block the illegal annexation of Kashmir by India.

Facing a severe revolt by the local population and war with Pakistan, India took the matter to the UN, where a resolution was passed to the effect that the fate of Kashmir would be decided by a plebiscite.

The war ended with this resolution as Kashmiris, and Pakistan expected the UN to ensure that India would act as per the resolution.

Unfortunately, this never happened. There have been multiple wars between Pakistan and India on this issue, but the UN has failed to force India to hold the plebiscite.

Today, when we are commemorating the Kashmir Day, India still acts as the worst oppressor in the Kashmir valley, marginalising the locals and inflicting the worst kind of atrocities on them.

India has become so emboldened by the global silence that it recently attacked UN vehicles in Azad Kashmir. All the UN could do was to issue a plea that Pakistan and India should settle the issue bilaterally in a peaceful manner.

Similarly, the UN has completely and utterly failed to stop Israeli occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people.

It seems the UN is more of a forum to legitimise and support the actions of superpowers, especially the United States, when they wreak havoc on other nations under one pretext or the other.

Be it the phony claim of weapons of mass destruction, or the trumpeted Libyan threat, the UN is quick to fall in line to legitimise US aggression, but it fails badly in protecting small nations and territories.

I wonder what good is this forum if it cannot solve the longstanding Kashmir and Palestinian issues.

Raja Shafaatullah
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2021