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March 15, 2003

UN General Assembly Can Vote Bush Down

Most people think the General Assembly is irrelevant to issues of war and peace-- that all the power is in the Security Council.

But as this report by the Center for Constitutional Rights highlights, there is a little known UN Resolution 377 that allows the General Assembly to call an emergency session when the Security Council is split.

If one U.N. Member State requests that a meeting be convened to consider adoption of such a resolution and either seven Members of the Security Council or a majority of the Members of the General Assembly agree, an emergency special session will be called and the General Assembly will come together to discuss the threat to international peace. CCR and Greenpeace are seeking to find the requisite support for the convening of such a session. The resolution has been invoked ten times in the past 50 years.

We'll see if the General Assembly takes up the idea, but it could shift the debate from the "six undecided" to the vast numbers of countries around the world who oppose Bush's unilateral war.

Posted by Nathan at March 15, 2003 08:53 AM

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