On September 21, the United Nations will celebrate its 75th birthday. Founded in 1945 after 50 countries met in San Francisco to draw up the UN Charter, it was conceived as an international institution that would “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Since then, it has evolved into an organisation of great size and complexity that confronts a wide array of challenges. However, legitimate criticism and lingering questions remain about its future. Is it still relevant? Is it still fit for purpose? Is it still necessary?
The answers are as complex as its bureaucracy. Looking at only the “organs” of the UN, major repairs are in order. The five permanent members of the Security Council dominate the ageing security body and complicate matters of international concern.
It famously failed Rwanda in 1994, refusing on multiple occasions to recognise that a genocide against the Tutsi minority was taking place and failed to alter the peacekeeping mission to protect innocent Rwandans. Today, the Security Council has failed in Syria, where 500,000 are dead, 5.5 million are refugees and more than 6.6 million are internally displaced.
Peacekeeping interventions are poorly implemented. When the UN took control of Cambodia in 1992, it did so with a US$1.6 billion budget to oversee a transitional government and conduct free and fair elections. However, it was not enough to ensure a stable democracy, and the 35-year authoritarian reign of Hun Sen is a reminder of that failure.
Peacekeeping missions remain under-resourced, famously displayed in Rwanda where 2,548 peacekeepers were reduced to a mere 270 to protect hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Peacekeepers today often lack proper technical support, capacity and other resources.
The UN can be faulted for being too ambitious. The new set of Sustainable Development Goals include 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators. Some seek to end all forms of malnutrition or ensure access to safe, affordable water for everyone. Many indicators have yet to be finalised, and some countries lack the capacity to track the required data – not to mention a US$2.5 trillion financing gap.
Nevertheless, progress has been achieved. Under the previous Millennium Development Goals, the number of people in extreme poverty plummeted, 2.6 billion people gained access to improved drinking water and new HIV infections fell by 40 per cent.
Covid-19 has proven a distraction for many countries, and persistent challenges remain. Poverty is projected to rise. Internal conflicts prevent the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, as well as a lack of political will and weak governance.
Despite heavy criticism, the work of the United Nations is indispensable in areas mostly unseen and vastly under-reported. In Lesotho in Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Food Programme is the difference between starvation or a nourishing meal for hundreds of thousands of children, some of whom are orphaned because of the high prevalence of HIV. The UN in Lesotho has also worked behind the scenes to ensure political stability in a country plagued by political infighting.
More than a million Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar, and the UN provides a last line of defence for those seeking basic protection. Meanwhile, the international community has funded just US$470 million of the US$1.06 billion needed for 2020.
It is here the actions of the UN are noble and unsung, and criticism should go elsewhere. The Syrian civil war has raged since 2011, and for years the UN has coordinated a humanitarian response plan. However, international donors consistently fail to meet their commitments.
For 2020, almost 60 per cent of the US$3.8 billion needed in Syria has gone unfunded. In Yemen, 80 per cent of the population need humanitarian protection, and needs have increased amid the pandemic. However, the UN has received just 30 per cent of the US$211.9 million it needs for operations in 2020.
The UN may be a bloated bureaucracy, but it is what states make of it. It can be a valuable tool for diplomacy and conflict resolution through peaceful means or a political tool for obstruction. While critics are correct about the past, the UN is more accountable and its results are clearly visible, if under-reported and badly communicated.
Instead of using the UN as a scapegoat for political failures, criticism should be turned on to states that overpromise and underfund humanitarian interventions and often lack the capacity and political will to overcome development challenges.
