UN: An Ancient Relic That No One Cares About

By Tanmaya Kothari

In 2022, I can guarantee that most people reading this article and most people in general don’t take the UN seriously and why would they, there has been no fundamental change in the way the UN does business since its establishment. We must live with it till it either reforms itself, or we create a more representative group that better reflects the realities of today, and seeing the situation right now, those reforms will not arrive until a few decades later. In the past few years, UN and other affiliate institutes like WHO have become subservient organisations. As recent reports suggest, China is rapidly expanding its footprint in the almost defunct United Nations, I would not be unduly alarmed. Such reports have been emerging for a few years. China is not taking over. Even though India pulled out of the race for the top job in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2020, China lost to India in 2021 for a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Singapore defeated it in the World Property Organization. It lost to tiny Samoa in elections to the UN Statistical Commission. It came fourth out of five in polling for the UN Human Rights Council. The bottom line is that the world, which has better things to do, little notices or cares for what happens in that Lego building spanning the East 42nd and 48th Streets on First Avenue in New York. If the Chinese are trying to take over the United Nations, I would wish them Godspeed so the rest of the world can then create a new entity that better reflects the present geopolitical reality.

But before I begin to critique UN’s shameful subservience to superpower countries lets take a look back in time and

see how the UN was formed and what are the few good things it has done in the last 2 decades.

History of UN

On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace.

U.S., British, Soviet, and Chinese representatives met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in August and September 1944 to draft the charter of a postwar international organization based on the principle of collective security. They recommended a General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council consisting of the Big Four plus six members chosen by the Assembly. Voting procedures and the veto power of permanent members of the Security Council were finalized at the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Roosevelt and Stalin agreed that the veto would not prevent discussions by the Security Council. Roosevelt agreed to General Assembly membership for Ukraine and Byelorussia while reserving the right, which was never exercised, to seek two more votes for the United States.

Representatives of 50 nations met in San Francisco April- June 1945 to complete the Charter of the United Nations. In addition to the General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council of 5 permanent and 6 non-permanent members, the Charter provided for an 18-member Economic and Social Council, an International Court of Justice, a Trusteeship Council to oversee certain colonial

territories, and a Secretariat under a Secretary General. The Roosevelt administration strove to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s mistakes in selling the League of Nations to the Senate. It sought bipartisan support and in September 1943 the Republican Party endorsed U.S. participation in a postwar international organization, after which both houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed participation. Roosevelt also sought to convince the public that an international organization was the best means to prevent future wars. The Senate approved the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. The United Nations came into existence on October 24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter.

Now with that out of the way, let’s begin our main conversation, Is the UN useless or is it still relevant in 2021?

The shameful subservience of the World Health Organization to its overlord in China, and the consequent deaths of millions, is a telling example of what happens when a system is subverted (China stymied any attempts to discuss the pandemic in the Security Council). Of course, realizing that his future could be at stake, the WHO’s shameless Director General has distanced himself from China.

The 76-year-old UN is a relic that no one takes seriously, not even China.

The United Nations is an unending scandal masquerading as everlasting hope, afflicted by bigness in size, systems, and ego. Dag Hammarskjöld, the tragic second UN Secretary General, said that the United Nations “was

created not to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell”. It has infuriated with its numbing bureaucracy, its institutional cover-ups of corruption and the undemocratic politics of its Security Council. It goes to war in the name of peace but has been a bystander through genocide.

Governments may turn away NGOs, but the UN cannot be ignored. Neither can the UN’s huge logistical capabilities, such as the World Food Programme’s airlifts, be matched by any private organization. The UN is weighed down by “incompetence” and red tape. It is a very heavily bureaucratic organisation. It hasn’t changed. It has built systems on top of systems on top of systems. The organisation has grown so big that at times it is working against itself. Critics point to large numbers of support staff doing ill-defined jobs.

In 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Office was accused of handing over since 2013 lists of names of human rights activists that included Tibetan and Uyghur dissidents, some of whom were US nationals and residents. Initially the UN Office denied the accusation, then confirmed the sharing of names but disagreed that it had harmed the human rights defenders in question. In the UN issues are discussed. China does not know anything about discussion as it is a closed system, where whatever the Party says is divine instruction. So instead of training its sorry diplomats (who are abusive wolf warriors) to debate and discuss and put across China’s viewpoint, it seeks to subvert the process of discussion and debate by taking over the platform. Traditionally focused on the UN’s development activities, China now flexes its muscles in the heart of the UN, its peace and security work.

Now lets point our sights towards the largest economy of the world USA. We all now know that the UN is incredibly subservient to these superpower and none instance shows it better than the current afghan issue where UN has not even tried to do anything. Most thing the reason for this is the fact the US backed out of Afghan and now does not want to interfere. The immense influence that the US holds in UN is almost unsettling, UN refused to even lift a finger when the taliban takeover was going on and many experts say if it had the taliban takeover wouldn’t be a success. Seeing such disheartening and shameful things about the UN has resulted in the people questioning its relevancy.

When the United Nations was formed in 1945 major concerns in first decade were colonialism, economic development, prevention/resolution of conflict, nuclear weapons. Thereafter the focus kept shifting—arms control, Israeli Palestine conflict, weapons of mass destruction, development, human rights, peace keeping, equality among nations, prevention of genocide, war crimes. As the world changes, so do its priorities. Today we are more worried about terrorism, climate change, sustainable development, pandemics, but the international architecture, determined by a few, has remained the same.

This has to change and reformed need to come for the UN to stay relevant and useful in the future. As of 2022, UN is a completely useless and irrelevant supra national organisation in International Relations.

By Tanmaya Kothari