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| The United Nations headquarters in New York City, September 22, 2024. Reuters/David Dee Delgado |
| The backdrop to this week’s gathering of world leaders at the United Nations could hardly be more grim. Wars, increasing anxiety over the state of democracy and deep geopolitical divisions roil the global scene. At the dais of the U.N.'s General Assembly, dignitaries will once more appeal to the virtues of cooperation. But the august institution itself is grappling with its inability to reckon with a surging tide of challenges. The U.N. Security Council, dominated by the veto-wielding victors of World War II, has long been derided as an anachronism. But the ongoing wars in Ukraine and over Gaza have only underscored the inefficacy of what is the world’s most significant decision-making body. Tough collective action to rein in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor has proved impossible with the Kremlin on the Council, while the United States has for months shielded Israel from international pressure, stymying efforts to force a cease-fire between Israel and militant group Hamas as the death toll mounts. Officials in Turtle Bay looked on feebly over the weekend as Israel’s fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon threatened to sprawl into a full-blown war.
Indeed, the conflicts in the Middle East have strained the entire U.N. system. Court cases against Israel and Israeli officials are running through the International Court of Justice, the U.N.'s top court, and the U.N.-backed International Criminal Court. The investigations have proved polarizing, hailed by some governments as necessary enforcement of international law even as U.S. and Israeli officials cast them as spectacles loaded with bias. The U.N.'s main agency for Palestinians, known by the abbreviation UNRWA, is in Israel’s crosshairs, saddled with allegations regarding a small fraction of its Gaza staff linked to Hamas activity. The controversy has led to funding cuts when UNRWA is the most crucial deliverer of humanitarian aid and other support to Palestinians. Beyond the headline-grabbing conflicts, the international community embodied in the United Nations has failed to stop the disastrous civil war in Sudan, which seems likely to bring about one of the worst famines in recent years, or the steady disintegration of Myanmar’s state under its coup-plotting junta. (The international humanitarian advocacy group Oxfam has charted almost two dozen conflicts still raging, in part thanks to U.N. gridlock.) It has failed to adequately resolve spiraling post-pandemic debt crises plaguing countries in the developing world. It has presided over the displacement of a record number of people in communities torn apart by strife or collapsed by climate change.
“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today: Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres lamented in a recent interview with Al Jazeera, adding that the Council, encumbered by the rekindled rivalries of great powers, represented a “severe handicap” to the work of the U.N.'s various agencies in the field. On Sunday, Guterres helped open the Summit of the Future, a two-day session parallel to other U.N. meetings. The summit will deliver a “pact” agreed by consensus by member states outlining new governance concepts for 21st century problems, aiming to address risks posed by artificial intelligence, the difficulties financing the global sustainable development goals set out in previous decades, and the need to reform the Security Council. "We don’t need a crystal ball to see that 21st century challenges require problem-solving mechanisms that are more effective, networked and inclusive; that serious power imbalances in global institutions must be adjusted and updated; and that our institutions must draw on the expertise and representation of all of humanity,” Guterres said in a statement. But the diplomatic wrangling regarding the language of the pact illustrated the inherent difficulties of the project, with no meaningful pathway for actual Security Council reform emerging and Russia thwarting attempts to put nuclear disarmament back on the international agenda. Analysts still saw silver linings. “Despite frustrations about the U.N.’s effectiveness, the attention and energy that member states have devoted to this exercise reveals the value that they continue to place on the body, as well as their willingness to invest in its future,” wrote Stewart Patrick and Minh-Thu Pham of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They believe that the U.N. remains very much alive — if unwell — and that restoring its health and vitality matters.” Great power competition is increasingly defining the ethos of the Security Council, where the United States, Russia and China seemingly take turns playing spoiler. Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group think tank, laid out in a paper earlier this year how what’s happening in the chamber may echo its 20th century past. “Many U.N. officials and diplomats expect the Council to return to something closer to its Cold War self: a space for sporadic but useful cooperation among the great powers,” Gowan explained. “The [permanent five members of the Security Council] — and above all the U.S., China and Russia — have a choice. They can use the Security Council solely as a stage for political theater, or preserve it as a safety valve that they can use, albeit intermittently, in a period of high tensions. We do not know which they will choose.” President Joe Biden, in his final appearance as head of state at the General Assembly, will likely summon the language of the moment. He’ll almost certainly speak to the central importance of strengthening multilateral institutions, upholding international norms and rules, and boosting partnerships with allies. But he’ll face hardening skepticism from officials who see, especially in the U.S.'s conduct during Israel’s campaign in Gaza, a country that doesn’t always walk its talk. Politicians and advocates are clamoring for change. Last week, Finnish President Alexander Stubb called for an end to single veto powers — where only one of the permanent members can block action. Ahead of the Summit of the Future, David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, floated the idea that veto powers in the Security Council get suspended when the body is reckoning with mass atrocity events. The summit itself looks set to accelerate conversations about expanding the Council to better reflect the world as it is today. Still, in a report released Monday, Oxfam argued that the focus on great power competition was a sideshow to the deeper problems facing much of humanity. “While some have blamed the deadlock solely on rising geopolitical tensions between powerful countries, such a focus is incomplete,” the organization notes. Instead, the report suggests that the interests of a burgeoning “global oligarchy” had impeded international cooperation around climate change, pandemic response and punishing offshore tax havens. “A key reason for failures of international cooperation is extreme economic inequality.” | ||||||||