On September 19, 2023, Joe Biden, the leader of the world’s leading power, appears alone to condemn the Russian invasion and reaffirm his support for Ukraine, during the annual high mass of the United Nations, At New York. “Will we find within ourselves the courage to do what must be done, to defend the principles of the UN?”, the octogenarian asks the audience, in a tired voice.
In the room, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky applauds. But no leader of the P5, the UN Security Council, reacts. And for good reason, they are not there. Targeted by an arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice, the main accused, Vladimir Putin, did not come, nor did his powerful Chinese “friend”, Xi Jinping, who preferred to go to the Brics summit, in Johannesburg, a few weeks earlier. If the absence of the two autocrats was predictable, how, on the other hand, can we justify that of Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, allies of Washington? The message sent is disastrous: that of an organization in crisis, of a broken down multilateralism.
© / THE EXPRESS
Rarely in its history has the UN been so criticized. It is criticized for failing in its main mission – to end the world’s conflicts. “Where is the peace, for which the United Nations was created and which it had to guarantee?”, already scathed in April 2022 Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country has been suffering for more than two years the attacks of a permanent member of the Council of security.
The Quai d’Orsay considers the comments of a special rapporteur “shameful”
And what about Gaza? In March, the P5 ended up adopting a resolution demanding “an immediate ceasefire”, but six months after the massacre of 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, it has still not officially condemned the terrorist attack of Hamas. There was also this thunderbolt at the end of January: the Jewish state accused 12 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) of having participated in the killing. Then these declarations from a United Nations special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, believing that the massacre was above all a response to “Israeli oppression”. Contesting its anti-Semitic character “is a mistake, seeming to justify it […] a shame,” the Quai d’Orsay was indignant.
The UN no longer inspires confidence. Its ineffectiveness – also blatant in Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh or Niger – fuels the rhetoric of the enemies of multilateralism and populists of all stripes. The question comes back, nagging: does the UN still serve any purpose? Created on the ruins of the League of Nations, will it end like its ancestor, powerless to prevent the invasion of Manchuria by Japan (1931) and of Ethiopia by Italy (1935), and finally disbanded after World War II?
The interventions in Iraq and Libya, two turning points
Already in 2003, the American intervention in Iraq, without a UN mandate, had seriously damaged its credibility. “The war in Iraq marked a turning point, points out expert Richard Gowan. In the United States, everyone tries to forget it, but this event still resonates at the UN. It was indeed a moment when promises of the post-Cold War era have been betrayed. The same observation applies to the military action in Libya in 2011. Many African countries believe that the UN has misused the Security Council’s mandate and that the destabilization of the region has had lasting consequences, particularly in the Sahel. All of this led to persistent suspicion of Westerners.” In fact, the Council has been very divided since that time. “The intervention in Libya was authorized by a Council resolution, but it did not necessarily imply a change of regime. Some states, such as Russia, considered that we had gone too far,” adds Alexandra Novosseloff, associate researcher at the Thucydides Center at the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have only accentuated these divides. In the countries of the South, the feeling of “double standards” has grown, between the West’s support for kyiv, and its supposed indifference to other conflicts. If one place concentrates all the criticism, it is the Security Council. Certainly, this has always been a reflection of world tensions – it was glaring during the Cold War. But more than ever it has become the terrain of confrontation between the camp of democracies – United States, France and United Kingdom – and that of autocracies – China, Russia. “The Council’s goal was to reduce the likelihood of war by ensuring that it could never be used against the interests of a permanent member,” observes Stewart Patrick, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In this respect, he succeeded. Unfortunately, in times of great geopolitical rivalry, the great powers abuse their power. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has blocked any action by the Council. And the United States has allowed it to one of their allies, Israel, to commit flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.”
Instrumentalization of the Human Rights Council
To complicate matters, China – which seeks to impose its own world order – and Russia are doing everything to undermine the work of the UN. Recently, Russia ended the mandate of the committee of experts responsible for monitoring the application of sanctions against North Korea – which supplies it with arms and ammunition – by brandishing its veto. “We call among ourselves certain countries “usual suspects” : Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Cuba… In committee, they are experts in the art of blocking a resolution that they do not like. How ? By drawing up a “counter-resolution” identical to the one proposed, but by adding a point unacceptable to the country which tabled the text,” deciphers a UN executive.
Many authoritarian states have also become masters in the art of exploiting the question of human rights. A distressing symbol, the last Social Forum of the Human Rights Council (HRC), last November in Geneva, was chaired… by Iran, one of the planet’s dunces in this area. And Azerbaijan, which destroyed Armenian sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, was named vice-presidency of UNESCO, the UN agency for education, science and culture! With distressing bad faith, the HRC, two-thirds of whose 47 members are autocracies, focuses disproportionately against Israel. Between its birth in 2006 and May 2023, the Council condemned this country 103 times, but never China, despite its repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang…
Added to this is the confusion created by the speeches of the United Nations special rapporteurs. “Some campaign for human rights and are very serious, but others attack democracies to create a buzz, it’s easy, annoys a diplomat. Their reports are often unverified and poorly constructed , but this system allows anonymous people to take the light.”
However, the UN is not just about its Security Council. This galaxy, whose functioning is far from perfect, has in reality become a gigantic humanitarian organization. On the ground, certain agencies have a crucial role, such as the World Food Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization or the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. “The United Nations is made up of thousands of people doing tremendous work, in the most remote and conflict-ridden places on the planet,” insists Jean-Maurice Ripert, former permanent representative of France to the United Nations. Without UNRWA’s action, however controversial, Gaza’s survivors would likely starve.
Therefore, a question arises: what would a world without the UN look like? Undeniably, it would be worse. “Its charter constitutes the only legitimate basis of law accepted by the entire international community,” underlines former ambassador Michel Duclos. “Without the compromises obtained through the United Nations, the risks of conflict would increase further,” adds Richard Gowan. And to quote the credo of Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, second secretary general of the United Nations, from 1953 to 1961: “The United Nations was not created to take us to paradise, but to save us from hell.”
For this reason, the UN also deserves to be saved. Antonio Guterres is betting a lot on his Future Summit next September. Some fear that the ambitions of this major meeting, which will address the question of artificial intelligence, space or youth, are too high. During his Millennium World Summit in 2005, Kofi Annan managed to bring together 146 heads of state and government. It remains to be hoped that this time too, the leaders will respond. And that Joe Biden will not find himself alone again.
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