Can the U.N. Survive

by Eduardo del Buey

The U.N. Today

“The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.’

Dag Hammarskjöld, second U.N. Secretary General

Eighty years after its founding, the United Nations appears to have lost its credibility.

Can it survive as a credible and viable instrument of global diplomacy?

The number of member states violating their commitment to the U.N. Charter and its values is significant and indefensible.

There has always been a deep-seated acceptance that believes that hypocrisy is the only way that the organization can survive. Violaters must be ignored as the accepted cost of maintaining the multilateral institution lest it collapse under the weight of its own dysfunction.

The result is a world bereft of any international institution that today enjoys broad based credibility, trust, or respect.

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and then supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas War.

Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council,had attacked and invaded another U.N. member state – Ukraine – unprovoked and completely against international law and the Charter to which it has committed.

In February 2022, Russia again invaded Ukraine once again, causing hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties. As of 2024, Russian troops still occupy about 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million have fled the country, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Russia has engaged in a massive campaign to eradicate Ukrainian culture and language from occupied territories and has kidnapped and removed to Russia proper tens of thousands of Ukrainian children for indoctrination.

This is an egregious violation of universal human rights laws and contravenes the very essence of the U.N. Charter.

Today, twelve thousand North Korean special forces are reportedly fighting alongside Russia, while Iran and China provide sophisticated military equipment and support to the Russian invaders. Other states refuse to support international sanctions against Russia and trade in strategic materiel and funding to support the Russian war effort.

The U.N. has never been able to sanction Russia because of that country’s veto power at the Security Council. It watches helplessly as myriad international laws are broken by a dictator who imprisons and murders opponents and seeks to expand his country’s borders.

Putin’s main allies are no better.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has constantly starved his citizens to death and executed or imprisoned hundreds of thousands to satisfy his need for domination, while he pursues his nuclear ambitions and missile technology, both condemned by various ineffective UN resolutions.

Thus far, there has been no call to expel North Korea from the organization or to take concrete steps to end Kim’s reign of terror.

Yet another example of the international community and the United Nations remaining silent in the face of evil writ large.

The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to murder its own women and girls for the simple act of baring their hair or dancing in public. The Ayatollah’s regime continues to imprison and execute its opponents, bars freedom of speech and political organization, and demands that all its citizens submit to egregious tenets of sharia law under pain of death.

The Islamic Republic actively supports terrorist organizations around the world and is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent victims worldwide.

It continues to expand its sphere of influence across the Middle East and supports Hamas, Hezbollah and the brutal Syrian dictatorship of Bashir al Assad.

Despite this, Iran continues to be elected to U.N. bodies and exert its influence.

China has imprisoned over a million Uyghurs and is practicing cultural genocide against this minority. In 1959, China invaded and annexed Tibet and has worked assiduously to destroy Tibetan and Uyghur culture and identity.

Again, with complete impunity and no global public protests.

The Al Assad regime in Syria has massacred over 300,000 Syrians over the past decade and condemned over eight million to refugee status in its fight to retain power. And yet, its ambassador continues to roam the halls of the U.N. as a welcome member and Al Assad attends Arab summits as an honored guest.

Yet the U.N. takes no step to expel this regime.

His neighboring dictator Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan continues to massacre Kurds daily. His troops currently occupy parts of Syria, and have occupied half of Cyprus (a U.N. member state) since 1974.

Once again, with impunity.

There are no massive street demonstrations against Turkish violations of human rights covenants, and he and his bullying ways. He continues to be welcomed at U.N. headquarters as though his regime that fully adhered to its U.N. Charter commitments.

Globally, many political leaders violate UN conventions constantly and consistently and yet face no consequences for their actions.

Silence and acquiescence are assumed to be the cost of maintaining the U.N. alive and funded, and its structural dysfunction deprives the Secretary-General of any tools with which to address egregious vilations of its Charter.

I spent two years as Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General. During this time, I witnessed the weakness of the Secretariat in the face of bullying by the member states and the frustration of the leadership of the Secretariat in the face of imembet state mpunity.

When asked why the U.N. was so ineffective, I would be forced to reply that there were two U.N.’s working in tandem: the political bodies that reflected the goals of member states over which the General Secretariat has no authority and that were failing miserably, and the Specialized Agencies under the Secretary-General that normally delivered good results for all.

The above are a few of the many examples of the many U.N. member states that have violated the U.N. Charter and continue to do so.

However, and while this situation was unfortunate, it is now accompanied by the Secretariat’s own apparent violations of the U.N.’s mandate.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini continue to support and defend UNRWA even though we now know that many of its officers in Gaza have schooled generations of Gazans in antisemitism and outright hatred of Jews and Israel and have actively participated directly in Hamas’s terrorist activities, including the October 7^th Hamas terrorist attack.

In fact, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had a senior UNRWA official by his side acting as his bodyguard when he was killed this weekend.

Despite UNRWA’s 13000-strong contingent in Gaza, Hamas managed to build hundreds of miles of tunnels in which they hid missiles and ammunition and attacked Israeli civilian targets – in many cases adjacent to or within UNRWA civilian installations and with the acquiescence of the UNRWA management.

It boggles the mind that senior U.N. management knew nothing of this.

The United Nations Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), whose mandate is to assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area and keep the terrorist organization Hezbollah from arming and occupying the border area with Israel, has failed miserably.

Instead of enforcing its mandate, UNIFIL and its commanders have allowed Hezbollah to construct its vast network of tunnels along the Israeli Lebanese border, allowed the terrorists to place tens of thousands of rockets and missiles in the region, allowed them to fire at will at Israeli civilian targets, all the while protecting Hezbollah by acting as a shield against Israeli reaction.

Former UNIFIL peacekeepers have told media that they were constrained from patrolling certain regions within their remit by Hezbollah. The terrorists effectively definined where UNIFIL could and could not patrol, and what it could or could not do.

This has not only provided the terrorist group with protection but has effectively weakened the authority of Lebanese government, contributing to its ongoing inability to exercise its sovereignty over the critical border region.

The United Nations under Mr. Guterres appears to have gone from being an ineffectual organization that turns a blind eye to terrorism and tyranny to one that actively supports terrorists and their activities through acts of commission and ommission.

The current violence in the Middle East has resulted in many Gazan and Israeli lives lost. This is a humanitarian disaster.

Regardless of how one feels about the current violence however, the fact that the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the General Secretary of UNRWA support terrorist organizations responsible for the oppression and deaths of hundreds of thousands around the world and allow their officials to participate in murder and kidnapping is indefensible and destroys the organization’s very credibility and relevance.

Member states have yet to comment or criticize the activities of Guterres or Lazzarini or announce any corrective action.

Rot starts at the top.

In this case, the Secretary-General and his UNRWA chief must held to account.

The international community must decide if it wants a viable multilateral institution or one that simply sits idly by and caters to those who stand and act against its values.

Until then, many will continue to have no faith in the U.N.’s credibility and few will believe that the organization can be salvaged to indeed save humanity from the hell Hammarskjöld described.