When former UN secretary-general Late Dag Hammarskjöld said, “The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell,” little did he know his words would not age all that well, specifically in the 21st century.
The United Nations sure has not been able to save many nations from hell, certainly not the Middle East, nor several pockets of Europe and now it seems not even many nations in the rest of the continents.
So is the international agency, created in 1945 by 51 founding members with grand ideas and high hopes still relevant? India’s PM Modi doesn’t think so; a sentiment echoed by several other world leaders lately.
“International organisations that were once powerful have become almost irrelevant. Institutions like the UN are failing to fulfill their roles,” said Modi, during the recent three-hour podcast with American scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman. This is not the first time that the UN has been called weak, ineffective or irrelevant, when it comes to peacekeeping, on the international stage by a world leader.
Perhaps the most scathing attack, wrapped in humiliating sarcasm came from Donald Trump back in 2016 when he wrote in a social media post as to how, “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!” Almost a decade later and into his second innings as the US President, very little has changed — both in terms of the functioning of the organisation and the opinion of Trump. In February, this year while the Trump administration stopped U.S engagement with the U.N Human Rights Council, extended a halt to funding for UNRWA and reviewed the U.N cultural agency UNESCO, Trump remarked how the UN was “not being well run.”
He further told the reporters how a lot of the conflicts the US was working on should be settled but they were not since there was no help. Settling conflicts should be the primary purpose of the UN and ironically it is the very argument levelled against the organization.
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Trump’s tirade prompted a response from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres through a statement, “The UN has worked tirelessly to implement many reforms to increase efficiency and innovation.” At the centre of the mounting unfavourable opinion of the UN is how the institution did very little to evolve at the same pace as geopolitics and the new world order. What should have been a crack filled in due time, soon enough became a fissure wide enough to be a hindrance.
Staunch criticism of the UN
A radical part of the objections to the UN are directed at the UN Security Council. Argued by many to be one of the most dysfunctional parts of the UN because of the widening ideological difference between its five all powerful permanent members — Russia, China, US, UK and France.
With Russia and China usually pitted against each other in the five veto-wielding powers, there is always a questionable amount of progress made when it comes to resolving issues.
Time and again, the Security Council has been condemned for its inability to take any action on Ukraine, Israel, Sudan and countless other wars and humanitarian crises at the hands of one or more of its P5 members.
What has the UN failed to do?
Let alone stop but being unable to intervene in the expanding Middle East crisis is often cited as one of the colossal failures of the UN Security Council. As Israel confronts Hezbollah and with the US joining in the confrontation, the UN's 10,000 strong peace-keeping force watches as a helpless bystander.
Peacekeeping and preventing wars was why the organisation essentially came into being. Three years ago the world leaders raised a huge question mark on its very existence when President Zelensky faced the enemy who did not believe that Ukraine existed as a nation. The veto power at the Security Council renders Russia all powerful and capable and beyond the UN’s reach for maintaining peace or stopping the war.
Last year, while speaking to the world leaders at the General Assembly annual debate, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lamented on the mounting global conflicts and crisis. Remarking on the paralysis of the UN to prevail in matters of conflict resolution, he however circled the blame back to nations, and how that was “due to a weakening of our collective capacity for negotiation and dialogue.”
Sweeping and urgent reforms within the organisation are what most of the 193 member nations agree on. While President Lula has asked the organisation to “reconsider its exclusionary practices regarding permanent seats of the Security Council,” everywhere else too the calls for reforms have grown louder, if not shrill.
As the UN turns 80 this year, secretary-general Antonio Guterres acknowledged the need of the hour while speaking to reporters at UN headquarters in New York this month. He announced the UN was prioritising reforms to ensure it remains effective, relevant and responsive to the people it serves. However, the push to modernise the organisation needs to be continuous and remains riddled with challenges. But an acknowledgement of the issue and an immediate start is still a ray of hope.
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