In countries such as Syria and Yemen the only real event has been the gradual destruction of ordinary people’s lives and livelihoods. They are for years now into proxy wars of a multitude of players, all UN members, advancing all sorts of interests and agendas flattening kilometres of living space. An internal political settlement at the outset could have avoided all this. The 20th century was littered with examples, among them SA in 1994. Recent UN attempts through the indefatigable Staffan de Mistura to settle the problems all stranded on the same rock: he did not have his organisation’s full backing. The UN Security Council is hobbled by a power distribution architecture required in the immediate post-Second World War years but that simply perpetuates misery in Syria and Yemen, but also Myanmar and elsewhere. Reforms to the UN could entail limitations to the veto when the General Assembly decides by two-thirds majority that a country’s humanitarian situation requires unhampered p...
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