![[OPINION] A republic made for the United Nations](https://www.rappler.com/tachyon/2025/10/UN71117954_20250923_LF_11722_.jpg "[OPINION] A republic made for the United Nations")
‘Whereas most colonial peoples achieved sovereignty by means of armed battle, we secured ours by means of the strategies of multilateralism’
The Philippines had but to regain full independence in 1945, however our diplomats have been already serving to form the brand new world order that yr. In San Francisco, the place the Constitution of the United Nations was being drafted, they spoke with confidence, procedural acumen, and ethical readability.
The pinnacle of our delegation, Carlos P. Romulo, took on the statesmen of world powers, opposing the proper of the 5 everlasting members of the brand new Safety Council to veto vital worldwide choices and insisting that the proper of colonized peoples to independence be acknowledged clearly. Based on Romulo, it took a private plea from the American secretary of state — together with the specter of a US Senate rejection of the brand new constitution — for the Philippines to acquiesce on the veto query. However on the proper to independence, the Filipinos prevailed.
Romulo would go on to turn out to be the primary Asian president of the Normal Meeting; Harry S. Truman would jokingly confer with him because the “president of the world.” Filipino diplomats participated actively within the creation of the liberal internationalist structure that has regulated the conduct of worldwide affairs for the previous eight a long time. Their initiatives ranged from human rights to decolonization, from disarmament to improvement.
When observers criticize the United Nations for its failures — and there are lots of — they generally fail to take the lengthy view. Earlier than the United Nations, the underlying logic of worldwide relations was that the sturdy do what they will and the weak undergo what they need to. It took two world wars and the idealism of two American presidents — Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt — for world leaders to internalize the concept the ability of states have to be, and may be, tempered by guidelines.
Certainly, on the finish of the final struggle, communist powers sought to consolidate their spheres of affect whereas Western empires sought to cling to their colonies. Most different nations weren’t even on the desk. The thought of a rules-based worldwide order was nonetheless novel for a lot of the world, however for Filipinos it was instinctive.
We have been, in any case, a republic made for the United Nations.
Our conception of our nationhood arose from the humanism of the Enlightenment, as articulated by Jose Rizal and the opposite leaders of the Propaganda Motion. There was a motive Rizal and others put schooling, freedom, and social justice earlier than independence: human dignity comes earlier than nationwide glory. Our revolutionary leaders, notably Apolinario Mabini, emphasised constitutionalism and humanitarianism as ethos of Asia’s first democratic republic.
However what made the Philippines really distinctive amongst most colonial liberation actions is the trail it took to sovereignty. We fought and fell in struggle — however rose once more, this time not in trenches however within the halls of energy in an imperial capital.
The second technology of our founding fathers — together with Manuel L. Quezon, Sergio Osmeña, and Manuel Roxas — achieved the “Filipinization” of colonial administration, the institution of self-rule, the laws of American dedication to Philippine independence, and eventually the implementation of this dedication by partaking all related actors in Washington. They appealed to the ethical sensibilities of the American individuals, however additionally they leveraged the Filipino mastery of legislation, politics, and process.
Briefly, whereas most colonial peoples achieved sovereignty by means of armed battle, we secured ours by means of the strategies of multilateralism. Thus we arrived at San Francisco already primed for energetic engagement.
We knew that our nationwide pursuits could possibly be protected and superior by means of norms and legislation, kind and course of, negotiation and consensus. We have been proper. Within the eighty years since then, we’ve got managed to assist form international norms in a way that protected our id and furthered our goals. We asserted our territorial cohesion, for example by working with like-minded states to win recognition for the archipelagic doctrine. At present, the 1982 UN Conference on the Regulation of the Sea stays an anchor of our efforts to guard our patrimony.
The identical intuition has guided our strategy to international governance. We’re all the time optimistic about how a lot the world can obtain by means of cooperation, however we mood this optimism with a measure of pragmatism.
Our model within the United Nations has all the time been that of a reputable accomplice, pathfinder, and peacemaker; we stability competing pursuits, together with our personal, to pave pathways for consensus. A lot of our diplomats have been instrumental in advancing multilateral processes, whether or not in constructing public well being resilience, growing norms of accountable habits in outer house and on synthetic intelligence, selling secure and orderly migration, or advancing local weather justice.
At present the Philippines’ management, and that of different center powers, has turn out to be much more vital. The United Nations faces a watershed second. A lot of its conventional defenders are shifting their focus, whereas people who have all the time been cynical of what it represents have discovered a chance to instrumentalize it for their very own functions. It’s typically sluggish, its forms overbearing, and its illustration uneven. But as Secretary Theresa Lazaro stated, there isn’t a various to the United Nations and the imaginative and prescient of an open, inclusive, and rules-based worldwide order that it represents.
The world has come a good distance since San Francisco, but in some ways we’ve got returned to 1945. We face existential dangers like local weather change and technological disruption at the same time as we grapple with avoidable ones — intensifying rivalries and eroding belief in international establishments. We Filipinos are thus referred to as to have interaction with the identical steadiness that carried our younger nation to the worldwide stage eighty years in the past — true to the spirit of a republic made, and nonetheless meant, for the United Nations. – Rappler.com
JJ Domingo is a overseas service officer at present on sabbatical pursuing a grasp’s diploma on the College of Oxford as a Chevening scholar. The views expressed are his personal and don’t essentially mirror these of the Division of International Affairs.
