Is the U.N. Fit for Purpose?

Is the U.N. Fit for Purpose?

At the end of my diplomatic career, I served as Deputy Spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General from 2011 to 2013.

Throughout my tenure, I oscillated between admiration for some of the excellent work performed by specialized agencies like UNHCR and the World Food Program and deep concern about much of the behavior of its political bodies.

The U.N.’s political bodies are so limited in what they can achieve that I question whether they actually serve any purpose.

The Security Council has five states that have an overriding veto. This permits each of them to block any resolution that doesn’t meet with their national interests or, in the case of dictatorships, the caprices of their leaders. Rather than work for good of all, they work for themselves, often at the cost of many lives.

Most recently, the Spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, stated that “The Secretary-General has been briefed by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, regarding extremely serious allegations which implicate several UNRWA staff members in the terror attacks of 7 October in Israel."

"The Secretary-General is horrified by this news and has asked Mr. Lazzarini to investigate this matter swiftly and to ensure that any UNRWA employee shown to have participated or abetted what transpired on 7 October, or in any other criminal activity, be terminated immediately and referred for potential criminal prosecution".

For Mr. Guterres to be horrified by this news is either a reflection of his own complicity (time and again he voiced strong support for the UNRWA) or incompetence for not knowing what was going on under his very nose, even though these activities by the UNRWA or at least some of its staff have been known publicly for some time.

On February 10^th Israel uncovered a massive series of tunnels under UNRWA headquarters that served as the nerve center for Hamas’s military and intelligence operations. Mr. Lazzarini once again claimed that UNRWA knew nothing about these tunnels.

Is Mr. Lazzarini simply naïve and incompetent or is he complicit in aligning UNRWA with Hamas? In my view, he should resign immediately.

The U.N. is mandated to spend hard earned global taxpayer’s money on the blind application of international law and not to take sides as UNRWA has done. The U.N. Secretary-General is ultimately responsible for what goes on under his watch and, in this case, should join Mr. Lazzarini in resigning if the organization is to sustain any credibility.

Moreover, whatever one may feel about the conflict between Hamas and Israel, it is but one of many in which the U.N.’s political bodies have been unable to fulfill their mandate because of its dysfunctional organization..

How often has Mr. Guterres taken Russian President Putin to task for unleashing a vicious war against a sovereign state while serving as a permanent member of the Security Council?

How often has he taken Syrian President Assad to the International Court of justice for massacring over 300,000 Syrians over the past ten years, or Turkish President Erdogan for massacring Kurds in Turkey and northern Syria?

Is there any record of his lambasting China for its mistreatment of Tibetans or Uyghurs? Has he spoken out against India’s attacks on its Muslim minorities in the name of Hindu nationalism?

The answer is, unfortunately, no.

Does the world need to spend millions of dollars per year to negotiate and sign treaties or conventions that signatories will ignore almost before the ink is dry?

Do countries like Iran have the right to lead the Disarmament Committee given its pariah status and aim to develop nuclear weapons? 

Indeed, does Iran have the moral authority to be a full member of the U.N.  as it oppresses and massacres girls and women simply for demanding their human rights or for executing men for supporting these demands?

With membership on the Security Council comes a responsibility to uphold commitments made by member states and force respect for human rights standards. This is a criterion that was insisted on by the member states themselves when they adopted resolution 60/251 in March 2006 to create the Human Rights Council.

Should states like Afghanistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia even sit on the Human Rights Council? Does it have any real credibility?

It leads me to ask if member states take it seriously or whether it is simply a talk shop with no commitment to results based management and a cynical approach to fundamental issues and values.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said that “the United Nations wasn’t created to take mankind into paradise but, rather, to save humanity from hell”.

At this moment heaven is beyond reach, but rather than save us from hell, the U.N. is falling into irrelevancy.

Some will say if the U.N. didn’t exist it would have to be invented.

Its specialized agencies would have to exist in order to provide global forums to address global issues far beyond the power of any single state to resolve.

But could its political bodies – The General Assembly, the Security Council, and others -- be reinvented and not wind up in the same place they find themselves now?

Would member states allow it to become a stronger more efficient and effective organization in which the Secretary-General would have real power and the means to enforce conventions and treaties and take punitive action against those who flaunt them?

Would the Permanent Five (the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China) agree to give up their veto power and deal with the international community on equal terms?

Finally, would member states commit to an organization that serves the greater good and not simply their own particular parochial national interests?

Sadly, I don’t think so.

What could be more successful would be an organization of democratic states bound by conventions to which they could well commit to honor fully and that would be empowered to negotiate with autocratic blocs of nations that have recently appeared under the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran, among others.

Access to trade, financial benefits, and visas would depend on the autocratic states accepting basic human and democratic rights as a quid pro quo.

There would be costs involved in the short term for the citizens of the democratic states. But in the end, we could influence others to really respect and adopt reforms in a way that the current U.N. system is either incapable or unwilling to do.

Are voters ready to pay the price for a better global polity? Are leaders?

That is the fundamental question.