As the United Nations celebrates 80 years of existence, the world is at war and the values that underpinned its founding are under threat. While state representatives flood into New York City for the General Assembly, Israel continues its offensive on Gaza, the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on and Sudan’s ‘war of atrocities’ rolls on largely unnoticed. The UN Charter and multilateralism itself is under attack, yet the institution has failed to stand up to bullies undermining the very core values of diplomacy.
The Security Council remains deadlocked when it comes to the most pressing peace and security issues, and member states still have a long way to go to ‘revitalize’ the General Assembly so that it can take action when the Security Council fails to do so.
The UN is facing an existential threat: its biggest financial backer – the United States – has slashed funding. Secretary-General António Guterres has proposed to cut budgets across the secretariat by 20 percent in a hasty response to address the funding crisis and at the end of his tenure. This could have been an opportunity to assess where the UN has a comparative advantage, and identify areas where it is not adding significant value, with a view to downsizing its bloated bureaucracy and sharpening its focus. But this requires a candid assessment of the UN’s strengths and weaknesses, that the current leadership and many member states seem unwilling to undertake. A serious review of the work of the secretariat will need to address the P3’s (the US, United Kingdom, France) who in addition to being permanent members of the Security Council continue to control the three principal departments of the secretariat (peacekeeping, political affairs and humanitarian affairs) by imposing the appointment of their nationals as their heads.
In the field of mediation, the UN, which in previous decades played a significant role in mediating conflicts, cannot even claim the status of a fly on the wall in peace negotiations for some of the world’s deadliest wars. From the war in Ukraine, Gaza, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan, the UN is absent from diplomatic negotiations and countries such as the US and Gulf States are taking the lead. Although the UN has regional offices and political missions, mandated to engage in mediation and supported by a sizable political department at headquarters, observers wonder why this infrastructure isn’t being put to good use. Peacekeeping is also in decline, with many host countries now asking the UN to close down peacekeeping missions.
With the declining moral and political authority of the UN, some analysts have suggested it could vanish like its predecessor the League of Nations. Despite all of its flaws, the UN is all that we have in the face of rising armed conflicts, a climate crisis, violations of human rights and the brazen flouting of international law. While the UN is failing in peace and security, its humanitarian work continues to serve some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Brave humanitarian workers continue to risk and sometimes lose their lives serving civilians in dire situations.
The UN will always remain the forum for international cooperation and it is needed more than ever before. It’s time for the Global South to reclaim the principles of the UN Charter and champion the reform of the UN, so that it can act on the basis of UN principles rather than the interests of the powerful.
The marking of the UN’s 80th anniversary and the violence that surrounds it, along with the upcoming election of a new Secretary-General, should inspire critical reflection and a renewed drive for change. This edition of Diplomacy Now features articles from former Under Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor, former acting High Commissioner for Human Rights and Political Affairs Director Bertrand Ramcharan, Abdul Mohammed and Anna Theofilopoulou, who played a critical role in supporting mediation respectively in Sudan and Western Sahara. Along with articles from former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and the International Crisis Group director for UN and multilateral diplomacy Richard Gowan.
As with every edition the views expressed by these authors are not all necessarily our own. However, ICDI remains committed to the ethos and philosophy that open debate, dialogue, diplomacy, and mediation, rather than armed conflict and war, offer the way forward to resolving any conflict.
Thank you for reading Diplomacy Now and we welcome your feedback at diplomacynow@dialogueinitiatives.org.
Jamal Benomar
Chair of ICDI
Indian Member of Parliament and former United Nations veteran Shashi Tharoor argues that the United Nations must adapt to our current multipolar world if it is to remain relevant.
“At 80, the UN stands at a crossroads. The world it was designed to serve has changed beyond recognition. The bipolar order of 1945 gave way to American unipolarity, which in turn has yielded to a fragmented, multipolar landscape. New powers have emerged, old alliances have frayed, and transnational challenges — from climate change to cyber warfare — defy the boundaries of traditional diplomacy. The UN must adapt or it risks becoming irrelevant,” he writes.
UN analyst Richard Gowan explores the how and why of the UN’s decline in mediation and how it might regain increasing relevance.
“The United Nations faces problems on many fronts, but its biggest challenge may be to prove that it can still play a significant role in international peace and security. Diplomats in New York, including members of the Security Council, lament the fact that the world organization seems unable to get a grip on the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan,” writes Gowan.
“Even where Council members have agreed on crisis response efforts in recent years, as in the deployment of a security force to Haiti in 2024, the results have been meager. As discussions over who should replace Secretary-General António Guterres in 2027 heat up, UN insiders are asking if there is any way to reverse these trends.”
Longtime former UN diplomat and scholar Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan offers advice for the incoming Secretary-General.
“From the time that she or he is elected, the next Secretary-General will need to act with the utmost wisdom and discretion, and to pursue a diplomatic strategy calculated to re-inspire confidence in the UN, to work with Member States on issues where the UN is capable of making a meaningful contribution, to insulate the UN from unnecessary controversies to the extent possible, and to inspire ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations,” Ramcharan writes.
The next Secretary-General will need as much room as possible to craft new approaches and strategies and should not be constricted by initiatives launched and decided upon before she or he is elected – including Guterres’ UN 80 initiative,” he adds.
Former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth argues that powerful states are gaming the Human Right Council to push pressing human rights issues off the agenda and argues for reform of the election process.
“The United Nations Human Rights Council was born of frustration with the poor human rights record of many members of its predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission. Yet by gaming the system, the world’s nations are undermining the key reform that was supposed to lift the council from the morass of the commission. That leaves the council unable to address several of the world’s most dire situations – most notably, the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It is time for governments to recommit themselves to the procedure that was supposed to produce a council membership that actually wants to promote human rights,” he writes.
Abdul Mohammed who served in the UN’s Sudan mediation office explores previous eras of mediation and its successes and failures and why the body’s role in mediation has waned in recent years.
“The UN was established as the anchor of multilateralism, tasked with safeguarding peace and mediating disputes before they escalated into disaster. Today, however, its credibility and capacity as a central actor in mediation have diminished and multilateralism itself is under threat,” he writes. “Yet, despite its weakening role, the vast majority of states, governments, and citizens continue to affirm that a world without the UN — or without a multilateral order at its core — is inconceivable. The question is not whether multilateralism is needed, but whether the UN can reclaim its leadership in mediation and global public goods.”
What can be done to improve UN mediation? Mohammed offers some suggestions.
Former UN diplomat Anna Theofilopoulou offers us some lessons from the diplomatic frontlines of one of the world’s longest running conflicts – Western Sahara.
“Among international conflicts in the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, the one over Western Sahara between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, has defied the efforts of five Personal Envoys of the Secretary-General, several Special Representatives and countless meetings between the two parties, trying to resolve it. As of now, the resolution of the 50-year-old conflict over the internationally recognized non-self-governing territory, annexed by Morocco in 1975, remains elusive,” she writes, delving into what has gone wrong along the way and why.
Nelson Mandela
