The United Nations is under greater strain than ever before in its 80- year history. Its authority, especially in situations of conflict, is being constantly challenged; attacks on its personnel are increasing; and massive cuts in funding and mounting member arrears are stretching its budget beyond the limit. Can this body, which has steered the world through thick and thin for eight decades, survive the new waves of hostility directed at it? Analysis by New African’s Editor, Anver Versi .
Reflecting on his decade-long experience as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres said the world had undergone fundamental changes between his first taking office in 2017 and now, as he prepares to leave it.
That same feeling has pervaded the thoughts of a large number of reflective people. Ten years ago, despite several crises, the world seemed a much more solid place and the UN was in many ways the reassuring rock around which the affairs of the world were discussed and conducted.
There had been many failures – especially in containing conflicts such as in Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Sudan and other places, and with the rising tide of people seeking refuge, climate change-
induced attrition, human rights abuses, and so forth. However, and despite the sidelining of the UN by world powers, as in the invasion of Iraq, there was at least lip service to the Rules-Based Order that had been in operation since the end of World War Two.
Although it was battered and bruised and the limits of its powers to effect change often cruelly exposed, the UN still mattered. Its multitude of agencies, including the World Health Organisation, carried out invaluable work in some of the world’s neediest places.
In addition, the creative economic and innovative energies of production and distribution unleashed by globalisation lifted billions of people out of poverty and raised hitherto struggling nations such as China, South-East Asia, India and parts of Latin America to dizzying heights of prosperity.
Africa was also a beneficiary. This mainly took the form of higher commodity prices, a small but relatively significant spike in manufactured exports, as well as an unprecedented increase in infrastructure stock. There was a remarkable increase in the number and quality of roads, railways, new and enlarged ports, modern logistical systems and an improved education and health matrix.
There was a general atmosphere of optimism that tomorrow would be better than today. The shrinking globe, thanks to an explosion of logistics and trade, was knitting the world together and bringing what had seemed unlikely partners together to solve common problems. There was a palpable confidence that it was in our power to solve whatever crisis we faced. The UN was still the conductor, coordinator and convener-in-chief.
The decade of disillusion
A decade later, the situation has changed completely. Ten years ago, the UN presided over a multilateral world that was working its way, albeit with many missteps, towards greater cohesion and a globalised marketplace that increased not only the total stock of wealth in the world but spread out its distribution of that wealth to those who had been hitherto marginalised.
The indicators set under the UN Millennium Development Goals, developed 15 years earlier, were largely all pointing in the right direction. The world had never eradicated poverty at such speed and depth.
That was then. Today the world has been fragmenting into regional groupings and individual nationalism. Trump’s ‘America first’ slogan, his weaponisation of economic instruments such as tariffs, the regime change efforts through assassinations and kidnapping, the chilling threats, destructive sanctions and outright military muscle-flexing have created an atmosphere of mistrust and instability.
Democratic governments are being challenged by openly fascistic forces, ethno-nationalism is on the rise, and many of the hallmarks of liberal democracies, including press and academic freedom and an independent judiciary, seem to be under attack.
Hard-gained prosperity is being rolled back, and the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. Swinging cuts in development aid have condemned millions to suffering early deaths and are playing havoc with the development plans of emerging countries.
Violent conflict has been increasing. The sense of impunity from those that wield power has unmistakable echoes of the worst atrocities in the last Great War. Even more threatening are the examples being set and followed. Naked power is replacing diplomacy, legality and adherence to rules.
António Guterres himself and his generally admirable staff have often been left wringing their hands in despair, reduced to making heartfelt appeals that are not only ignored but which earn the organisation and its agencies a slew of insults.
What has been happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere demonstrates all too clearly the UN’s current impotence to make effective change in the face of such hostility – largely because of an outdated model around the Security Council.
So, in a world where the international Rules-Based Order – the overriding principle behind the establishment of the UN – is being trampled underfoot, can the UN survive and function?
An increasing number of commentators, including some people in positions of supreme power, are openly questioning if the UN as we know it has any future at all. Some have even been positing that US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is being set up to rival the UN Security Council as a wedge to further erode the position of the UN in global affairs.
Others argue that in fact, the need for a strong, functioning and well-supported – and funded – UN has never been greater than it is now.
“We are unmoored just now. A lot of the certainties that people have grown up with, and banked on to allow them to understand the world, have changed,” says Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor and one of the most experienced journalists in the world. He was discussing the state of the world and the steps that have led to its current shape on a special series of excellent podcasts commissioned by the BBC.
He says that to understand the new world we are in, “It is important to have a historic sensibility about where we have come from, the mistakes we have made in the past.
“If you look at the various catastrophes that have happened even in relatively recent times – the invasion of Iraq is a very good example in 2003 – there was tremendous ignorance about what they were getting into, the potential consequences of what might happen, and that has continued to unfold over the years since then.”
Taking a historic sensibility on the same programme, historian Professor Margaret MacMillan of Oxford University casts an eye back to the foundation of the UN and the origin of the Rules Based Order.
“The Rules Based Order is some attempt to regulate the anarchy which exists among states and some attempt to build a better world in which we don’t use war as a way of settling disputes, we don’t use war as a way of seizing territory from other nations, we don’t use war to avenge insults, and we don’t try and destroy other societies,” she says.
“And the danger of breaking the rules – and we see this in our own societies,” she argues, “is that others will follow. The Rules-Based Order is under tremendous strain, and we have to hope that it can somehow be maintained and reconstituted.”
The UN is without any question the only impartial guarantor of the Rules-Based Order, as long as it is not undermined by member states.
Security Council paralysis
The blame for the UN’s perceived lack of effectiveness, for example in enforcing international law when it is broken, should be laid at the door of the current make-up of the Security Council, according to Guterres.
During an interview with the Financial Times , he said that while the UN was involved in a large number of activities, the Security Council is at the centre of its work. But “the truth is that the Security Council became, during those 10 years, practically paralysed by the geopolitical divides.”
For example, he says the succession of vetoes by Russia over Ukraine, and the US over Israeli activities, especially in Gaza as well as in other areas, illustrates that “the Security Council has shown a total lack of capacity to intervene”. Therefore, he argues, “a sense of impunity is now prevailing”.
This, he continues, dramatically diminishes the UN’s leverage because “there is no Security Council able to implement the measures that allow countries to understand that they must behave. If not, they will be punished.”
On the more optimistic side, he sees the rise of middle-powers such as Australia, South Korea, Indonesia,
Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Nigeria as “a very positive trend. I think we are moving clearly into multipolarity.”
Properly organised, this multipolarity would lead to multilateral institutions. If it is not properly organised, he insists, multipolarity will lead to more competition and eventually more conflict. He recalls that it was a multipolar world in the early 1900s, “but in the absence of multilateral institutions of governance, the result was the First World War”.
But he wants multilateral institutions that “correspond to the world of today, and not the world of 1945”, when the Council, with its permanent members and veto options, was established. He says that among the host of UN reforms, such as in efficiency, impact, coordination and management, it is essential to reform power relations and “the distribution of power relations” within the organisation.
“Let’s take an honest look at the Security Council. There are three European members in the Security Council (Russia is a European country) out of five (China and the US are the other two). Europe is not three-fifths of the world. There are no African permanent members, no Latin American permanent members and one Asian permanent member.”
But it is clear, he says, that the reality on the ground will have to prevail. “The Security Council will inevitably have to adapt – like the Bretton Woods system – to what the position is today, and the relative weight of the different powers in the world.”
He admits that the current veto-wielding members are not likely to give up their special powers willingly. “Yes, power is never given; it needs to be taken. The question is how can we organise the international community to create the conditions for that power to be taken?”
Therein lies the rub. Indeed, while everybody or almost everybody agrees that the Security Council and its veto system must be reformed if the UN is to truly carry out its functions of enforcing international rules, the question remains: “Who will bell the cat?” Perhaps the next Secretary-General will come up with a solution.
Africa and the reform process
Although the majority of African countries that became members in the 1970s were relatively newcomers, their size and influence have grown, and they are now a substantial group.
Today, the Africa Group is composed of 54 members. Amina Mohammed, a UK national, holds the second-highest position in the organisation as the Deputy Secretary-General.
The Africa Group is the largest regional group at the UN and hence holds considerable voting power when it comes to the selection of various candidates for UN agencies. Over the past few years, it has also been speaking largely with one voice, amplifying the strength of positions on numerous policy decisions.
By following its own agenda rather than siding with the dominant spheres of influence, it has brought a freshness and independence of thought that has made its interventions a welcome change from the more rigid and predictable utterances of others.
It has also campaigned vigorously for various reforms of the UN, and its stance has been adopted by other regional members that also feel the structure of the body, particularly the make-up and conduct of the Security Council, must change. The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus, for example, proposes expanding the Council to at least 26 members. It demands at least two permanent seats for African nations – complete with full veto power, plus additional non-permanent seats.
The Group also supports proposals led by France, Mexico and a cross-regional group to enjoin permanent members to voluntarily refrain from using the veto in cases of mass atrocity such as genocide or war crimes. It also supports a General Assembly Resolution which mandates a formal debate whenever a veto is cast.
While there is a strong desire, especially from emerging nations, to change parts of the UN Charter, such as the veto system, the current regulations make it well nigh impossible. To do so would require a two-thirds majority and the unanimous approval of all five permanent members.
But as Guterres says, sooner or later, the Security Council will have to reflect the realities of today’s world rather than those of 1945. He has urged members to continue chipping away, and the Africa Group is foremost in working away at the edifice. As the Secretary-General says, Africa matters, and has always mattered – now perhaps more than ever before.
Financial body blows
In the meantime, the UN has to cope with heavy body blows to its financial system. Total arrears in unpaid contributions are now roughly $4.5bn. The US accounts for roughly 95% of total unpaid dues, owing about $2bn to the regular operating budget and over $2.5bn to peacekeeping budgets. China also owes $445m.
The US has also slashed voluntary funding to various agencies and withdrawn, or begun to do so, from 31 international bodies. These include the World Health Organisation, UNESCO, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Democracy Fund and the UN Human Rights Council. It has also cut funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
With the huge depletion in its funding, the UN has had to cut 22% of its Secretariat posts. But Guterres remains defiant. He says the writing was on the wall immediately after Donald Trump was re-elected. He says they foresaw what was about to happen and planned for it.
As agencies drastically reduced their staff and adjusted to the funding available, the organisation did everything possible to minimise the negative impact on “those that matter, the people we care for”.
“Obviously, more people are dying from hunger, and more people are dying from lack of vaccines,” he admits. Still, the total predicted collapse of the body in the face of the funding withdrawal has not happened. It soldiers on.
Guterres counts many of the UN’s successes – its unique convening ability that he believes has prevented a multitude of conflicts from escalating, its central role in dealing with epidemics and endemic diseases, its various development strategies, its support for cultures and world heritage, its campaign for better health and gender equality, and its relentless battle against the causes of climate change – as proof positive that the body has served the world as well as it has been allowed to.
What he sees as its crowning glory, however, is that it has helped “to avoid a war among superpowers so far”. That service, he says, remains as important today as it was 80 years ago and justifies the UN remaining at the centre of a multilateral governance system.
To that we say Amen. Long may the UN continue to survive. Its demise will surely usher in the nightmare of ultimate Armageddon.
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Can the UN survive in a hostile world?
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