In one of its recent meetings, the United Nations Security Council refused to buy Pakistan’s position on the Pahalgam terrorist attack which prompted India to launch Operation Sindoor. The meeting was attended by the five permanent members as well as the non-permanent members. That said, the United Nations has been reluctant to unequivocally condemn Pakistan for promoting terrorism.

Although its Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked that ‘those responsible [for the Pahalgam incident] must be brought to justice through credible lawful means’, he expressed deep concern over India’s military response. The UN’s chief spokesperson said that Guterres had advised ‘military restraint’ since a ‘military solution is not a solution’. Apparently, the UN chief was pained to ‘see relations reaching a boiling point’.

What can be the credible, lawful means to bring terrorists to justice? India cannot possibly sit across the table with Pakistan-based terror outfits and discuss modalities of peace with them. Terrorists and their camps have to be eliminated. Since these outfits operate from Pakistani soil, India has on many occasions in the past brought up the matter with Pakistan’s government, led by civilians or military Generals. After the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, New Delhi supplied dossiers to Pakistan, detailing the involvement of the terror outfit, Lakshar-e- Tayaba (LeT), but Pakistan simply ignored the evidence. In 2016, after Pakistan-linked terrorists attacked an Indian air base in Pathankot, India invited a Pakistani investigation team to jointly probe the incident. The team came and then made a mockery of the effort.

After the attacks in Uri and Pulwama, India did not waste time in providing evidence to Pakistan but carried out air strike inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), though only against terror launch pads. New Delhi’s message was clear: Stop fomenting terrorism in India or face the consequences. But Pakistan did not get that message. India, as before, maintained restraint even after the Pahalgam incident, merely targeting terror assets inside Pakistan. The escalation happened after Pakistan responded with strikes against Indian military assets and on the civilian population.

The United Nations has expressed its willingness to contribute to bringing peace between India and Pakistan, while also saying that the matter should ideally be resolved bilaterally. New Delhi had attempted to resolve the matter several times in the past, but Pakistan failed to rein in its terror factory, and this is not surprising given that it is the chief patron of the factory. The United Nations perhaps believes that it can mediate on the Kashmir issue to settle the matter. But it is barking up the wrong tree. Kashmir is simply not the issue here; it is terrorism.

In any case, as India has made it categorically known, there is nothing to discuss on Kashmir with Pakistan, except the return of PoK to India. If a military strike by India troubles the UN Secretary-General, it must ask Pakistan to stop promoting terrorism in India. As for the ‘restraint’ that he advises, New Delhi did show restraint by agreeing to a pause in the Operation Sindoor offensive after the Pakistanis—rattled by the Indian counter-strike—made a request for it. In the Pahalgam context, a UN spokesperson called such terror attacks as ‘criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed’.

And yet, in its over-zealousness to ‘balance out’, the UN puts the perpetrator and the victim at the same level and talks to them (and about them) as if they are equals. Its penchant to hyphenate India and Pakistan is past the sell by date. India has moved far ahead and is in no mood to accept such unfair equalisers. This is why the reputation of the United Nations has taken a hit—it hesitates to call a spade a spade and indulges in verbal vagueness.

The United Nations has its favourite whipping boys who are promptly declared to be at fault when conflicts break out. Take the recent case of Israel’s actions against Hamas, after the terrorist group killed more than a thousand innocent civilians and took hundreds more as hostages—including children and women—on 7 October 2023 in Israel. Even one year after the incident, there was no clear condemnation of Hamas by the UN, although several countries including India have unequivocally held the terror outfit accountable. A resolution in the UN to condemn the Hamas fell short of the required majority.

On the other hand, Guterres later stated that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum and that the 7 October terror strike should be understood in the context of Israel’s ‘suffocating occupation’ of Palestinians. Lest his remarks be considered as a justification for the killing by Hamas, he clarified that he was not attempting any such justification; that did not sound convincing, though. A similarly flawed cause-and-effect argument is given when terror attacks instigated and planned by Pakistan take place in India; it is said that unless the ‘Kashmir issue’ is amicably resolved between India and Pakistan, such terror incidents will continue to take place.

On Kashmir, the resolution that still remains in the UN’s books—thanks to India’s ill-fated decision to approach the agency back in 1948 to resolve the dispute—and is often quoted, ought to be scrapped, as it has no relevance today.

The United Nations should get rid of this notion. In the case of Israel, for instance, it has been especially unfair, though nobody denies that Israeli attacks have at times taken the lives of innocent civilians. The author Daniel Gordis writes in his book, Israel: A Concise History of a Modern Nation, about the UN’s obsession with castigating Israel. Quoting sources, he says that between 2003 and 2014, the UN issued 314 resolutions concerning Israel—this number was close to 40 per cent of all resolutions passed during that period. ‘That constituted six times more resolutions than those addressing any other country; the “runner-up” was Sudan’, he said.

Gordis, again quoting identifiable sources, stated that during the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) March 2013 session alone, six resolutions critical of Israel were adopted, while four resolutions addressed all other countries of the world put together. The UNHRC failed to pass a single resolution against rights violations in countries such as China, Sudan and Pakistan. Some voices were raised to correct the narrative after the UN issued a strong condemnation of the conflict in 2014, as Gordis noted. A former British forces officer pointed out in a newspaper article he wrote, that while the UN had blamed Israel’s continued occupation and blockade of Gaza for the violence, the fact was that Israel had long before withdrawn its forces from Gaza. The British officer added that the escalation in the conflict was primarily because of the Hamas’ aggression.

This was not the only time that the UNHRC had been flawed. Early this year, its High Commissioner Volker Turk referred to human rights issues in Kashmir (along with Manipur) in his global update. India slammed the agency’s ‘cherry-picking’ and added that Turk’s remarks did not match the ground reality in either Jammu and Kashmir or Manipur. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, Turk made no mention of Pakistan, where the rights of civilians, non-Muslims, non-Sunni Muslims, and people in Balochistan have been under regular attack. Theres have been several documented cases of enforced disappearances, tortures and extra-judicial killings in the region.

The UN’s consistently prejudiced attitude against Israel came to the fore, yet again, in 2024. Tel Aviv was so furious with the UN’s failure to categorically condemn the Hamas for launching multiple missile attacks on Israel that its Foreign Minister, in an unprecedented move, actually barred the UN Secretary-General from entering Israel!

Back in 2004, after Israel vacated Gaza, the Hamas responded by firing several rockets on Israeli soil, claiming victory for its armed resistance. Had the UN intervened strongly and called out the terror group for its provocation, and other countries had rallied in support of Israel and against Hamas, perhaps the latter could have been contained. In the eventuality, riding on its ‘success’, the Hamas registered a dramatic win in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, and displaced the Fatah (the political wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization) in 2006. From there on, the Hamas progressively grew in strength and continued even more robustly with its terror activities against Israel.

While the United Nations is within its rights to express concerns about military conflicts and also seek de-escalation, its appeal would have greater credibility if it calls out the aggressor by name. One of the reasons why its image has taken a hit in recent years is because of the selective approach it adopts on contentious matters.

It must be remembered that, while India may not be among the top major money contributors to the UN, it is among the biggest contributors to its peace-keeping force. India received the UN’s highest peacekeeping honour in 2023, posthumously awarded to two Indian peacekeepers for their sacrifice during duty in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Close to 300,000 Indian peacekeepers serve more than 50 UN missions—over 5,000 Indians are deployed as peacekeepers in nine active missions. Surely, that should count for something when it comes to the UN taking positions that affect India.
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