The UN: Dying Or Being Killed

“The UN was created not to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell”— Dag Hammarskjöld 

When Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and aspiring Secretary-General of the United Nations, recently described the UN as undergoing a kind of “slow death”, he touched a nerve. The Argentine diplomat complained that an organisation established to preserve international peace was drifting towards irrelevance, making little meaningful contribution to resolving contemporary crises and wars. Russia was not amused.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded with characteristic sharpness, suggesting that Grossi’s pronouncement might have more to do with his campaign to succeed António Guterres than with objective diagnosis. Criticising the UN, she argued, had become almost a political business. Yet Moscow simultaneously conceded much of Grossi’s case: the organisation was indeed going through hard times, burdened by bureaucracy, financial difficulties, double standards and declining success in resolving international crises.

Thus emerges a curious debate in which both protagonist and critic appear to agree upon the disease while quarrelling over who infected the patient. Perhaps that is precisely the question the world should be asking: For what exactly is this entity called “the United Nations?” 

It does not possess an army waiting outside its headquarters to enforce its resolutions. Its Secretary-General is not president of the world. Its magnificent building beside New York’s East River may create the impression of global authority, but behind those glass walls remain sovereign states relentlessly pursuing their own national interests. When those interests coincide, the UN appears powerful. When they collide, paralysis follows. This contradiction was embedded in the organisation at birth.

The United Nations emerged in 1945 from the ashes of a devastating world war. Humanity desperately needed an institutional mechanism through which nations could talk before they began shooting. Yet the structure created to protect international peace simultaneously institutionalised inequality. Five states—China, France, Russia’s predecessor the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—were given permanent seats on the Security Council and the power of veto.

Eight decades later, much of the world has changed. Colonial empires have disappeared. Asia and Africa contain enormous populations and powerful economies. India has become the world’s most populous country. Latin America has developed into a major political and economic region. Yet the essential architecture of international security remains frozen in the political realities of 1945. That is hardly a recipe for unquestioned legitimacy.

Grossi therefore has a point. An institution that repeatedly watches wars unfold while issuing statements expressing “grave concern” inevitably begins appearing helpless. Gaza, Ukraine and numerous other conflicts have demonstrated how swiftly lofty principles collide with geopolitical alliances. 

A resolution unacceptable to one permanent power encounters a veto; another crisis produces the reverse alignment. International law begins looking universal in theory but selective in application. Small countries notice, as do ordinary people. Zakharova also raises a legitimate question: because of whom has the UN become ineffective? Here the blame game becomes uncomfortable.

Russia accuses Western countries of capturing international institutions and imposing double standards. Western governments accuse Russia and China of frustrating collective action. Developing countries accuse both camps of applying international law selectively. Each side produces evidence supporting its case. Perhaps all should look into the mirror.

The United States cannot complain about Security Council paralysis when it uses the veto to protect policies important to Washington. Russia cannot condemn selective multilateralism while employing exactly the same privilege where its interests are involved. China, Britain and France are equally beneficiaries of a system in which five countries possess powers denied to the remaining membership. The problem therefore extends far beyond António Guterres.

Certainly, every Secretary-General must be scrutinised. Bureaucracies become complacent. International organisations accumulate departments, committees, consultants, conferences and reports until maintaining the machinery threatens to become an objective in itself. The UN is currently facing severe financial pressures, partly because member states have failed to pay contributions in full and on time. Reform, consolidation and accountability are consequently unavoidable.

However, expecting a Secretary-General to solve conflicts that the world’s most powerful governments are determined not to resolve collectively is rather like blaming the referee because the players have decided to ignore the rules. There is an additional irony in the present debate.

Grossi wants to reform an institution whose very method of choosing him illustrates its democratic deficit. The General Assembly may contain almost every sovereign state on earth, but the Secretary-General is appointed only after recommendation from the Security Council. Ultimately, a candidate unacceptable to one of the five permanent members can be stopped. Thus, the prospective custodian of international impartiality must first survive the preferences of the world’s most powerful states.

Can genuine independence emerge from such dependency? Yet those who gleefully pronounce the United Nations dead should be careful what they wish for. Behind the diplomatic theatre exists another UN rarely seen on television: agencies feeding hungry populations, sheltering refugees, vaccinating children, assisting displaced communities, monitoring nuclear installations, documenting human-rights violations, helping conduct elections and establishing technical standards that enable nations to cooperate in countless mundane ways.

When a Security Council meeting fails spectacularly, cameras are present. When humanitarian workers prevent thousands from starving, international television rarely interrupts regular programming. The UN’s failures are dramatic; many of its successes are almost invisible. Therefore, destroying it because it is imperfect would amount to demolishing a hospital because some diseases remain incurable.

What is required is neither blind defence of the institution nor fashionable denunciation of it. The Security Council requires serious restructuring so that contemporary populations and regions receive credible representation. 

The veto needs restraints, particularly where mass civilian suffering is involved. The bureaucracy must be subjected to ruthless scrutiny. Financial obligations must be honoured. Recruitment must genuinely reflect geographical diversity. And, above all, the Secretariat must remain independent of every bloc—Western, Russian, Chinese or otherwise.

The next Secretary-General will need something more than administrative competence. He or she must possess the courage to irritate all powerful countries impartially. That may be the real test of independence.

Grossi says the UN is slowly dying. Russia says others have pushed it into crisis. Both propositions contain fragments of truth. But institutions seldom die by themselves. They decline because those entrusted with sustaining them gradually withdraw faith, resources, obedience and political will. Perhaps the United Nations is not dying at all. Perhaps it is being slowly suffocated by the very nations that invoke its Charter whenever convenient and disregard it whenever inconvenient.

And herein lies humanity’s predicament. The organisation created after one world war to prevent another remains flawed, unequal and frequently frustrating. Yet in an increasingly polarised world armed with nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and technologies capable of destruction beyond anything imagined in 1945, abandoning the only universal political forum humanity has ever constructed would be an astonishing act of self-harm.

The United Nations desperately needs reform but the world may discover, rather painfully, that an inadequate table around which enemies can still sit is infinitely preferable to no table at all.

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The writer, lawyer and author, is former Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), a member Advisory Board and Senior Visiting Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE)