Immediately after World War II which took a lot of lives, wealth and livelihood, the Allied Nations decided to create the United Nations. The reason being, a similar catastrophe should not be allowed to repeat.

Even though the idea and intention looked good initially, eventually the Allied Nations of World War II (mainly made up of the US, UK, Russia, France and China) took control and power of the United Nations.

The five Allied Nations concerned were not only given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council but were also were given a veto privilege. Ten other countries were voted to the Security Council.

However, these countries have their membership to the Security Council limited only to a two- year term. Furthermore, they do not enjoy a veto privilege. This move was initially agreed to by the majority of all the other countries but under undue influence largely by the US and the UK (the latter which still had an empire under its rule).

This veto privilege seems very biased and unacceptable. It is because any sanction against a country can only be approved if all the five permanent member countries agree irrespective of how many of the other Security Council member countries have voted for any such sanction.

This unfair privilege has created a very narrow bottleneck and ultimately the majority of UN member countries have become helpless and can only watch what is happening to other nations.

Very recently, a few catastrophes occurred in two different parts of Asia. The first was the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip where victory to Israel was declared early this year.

The second was Sri Lankan army offensive against LTTE Tamil Tiger separatists (it has just been concluded with victory to the Sri Lankan army).

Even though both wars were geographically far apart, there are a lot of similarities. Both were wars between well-equipped national armed forces and ill-equipped separatists. Both wars had an enormous amount of civilian casualties.

The UN moved in to provide aid (food, clothing, tents, medicines etc) but only after the wars were almost over. What the UN do during the above wars?

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave quite a lot of press Conferences. He also, off and on, ‘requested' for cease fires and safety for the civilians. However, what actually happened?

Thousands of civilians died. Many others suffered injuries, were left homeless and had to deal with food shortages. The bulk of UN's relief efforts came only after the wars, more than months later.

The whole world watched in despair and in grief as both the above wars were fought to their conclusions. The most sickening part was watching how the superpowers only sent their ‘advice' to the countries fighting it out.

I feel a similar fate will befall all civilian communities anywhere in the world if a war erupts in their country. The leaders of the world should be firm and strict to ensure that civilians are protected at any cost during a war.

The present-day catastrophes and the inhuman treatment of the innocent (civilians) could have been avoided if the UN had been true to its charter. However, this seems a virtual impossibility with some countries having a veto privilege.