The U.N. has much work to do, Vatican ‘foreign minister’ says

There are currently 50 conflicts worldwide, despite the work of the agency
The United Nations mission is not yet complete 70 years after its founding, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s “foreign minister” has said.
While the U.N. has done much commendable work, there remains much yet to be done, said Archbishop Gallagher, the British Vatican secretary for relations with states.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly last Friday, Archbishop Gallagher said: “We must acknowledge that over the past 70 years, the United Nations has succeeded in avoiding a great global conflict and the outbreak of many wars between member states.
“Nonetheless, there are presently at least 50 conflicts or situations of latent conflict, to say nothing of the actions of international terrorist and criminal organisations, set up as quasi-states and as a sort of ‘alternative’ international community.”
He added: “It is a bitter irony that the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Organization is accompanied by an exodus of peoples which is the greatest seen since those caused by the Second World War,” which ended in 1945, the year of the U.N.’s founding, Archbishop Gallagher added. “Entire populations are being displaced, as they flee from war, persecution, exploitation and poverty.”
Archbishop Gallagher outlined four areas where the U.N.’s work is most critical: the responsibility to protect, the responsibility to observe existing international law, disarmament and climate change.
On the responsibility to protect, “due to the unacceptable human costs of inaction, the search for effective juridical means for the practical application of this principle must be one of the most urgent central priorities of the United Nations,” Archbishop Gallagher said.
The words in the preamble of the U.N. charter “‘promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedom for all’ not only justify the implementation of the ‘responsibility to protect,’ but also bind the international community to find the means to do so, he added. “Otherwise, the great edifice of the charter of the United Nations would be reduced to a mere tool for maintaining global equilibrium and for resolving controversies. This would betray not only those who drafted the charter, but also the millions of victims whose blood was shed in the great wars of the last century.”
On the subject of international law, Archbishop Gallagher said the provisions in the U.N. charter banning the unilateral use of force by one member state against another “cannot become an alibi for excusing gross violations of human rights.”
“A serious examination of conscience is needed to accept responsibility for the role that certain unilateral interventions have had in the humanitarian crisis which today causes so much hurt in our world,” he added, quoting from Pope Francis’  remarks to the U.N. last month: “Hard evidence is not lacking of the negative effects of military and political interventions which are not coordinated between members of the international community.”
“The current crisis,” Archbishop Gallagher said, “calls us to renewed efforts to apply the law in force and to develop new norms aimed also at combating the phenomenon of international terrorism in full respect for the law.”
Despite May’s failure of the U.N. Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “it is all the more important that the international community and the individual states most involved clearly signal a real desire to pursue the shared objective of a world free of nuclear arms,” Archbishop Gallagher said. “Nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction are irreconcilable with, and contrary to, an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence between peoples.”
by Catholic News Service
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/10/07/the-u-n-has-much-work-to-do-vatican-foreign-minister-says/