OPINION: The United Nations (U.N.) was founded in 1945 after the fallout of the Second World War. Meant to replace the League of Nations, the U.N. was put in place to help maintain global peace and prevent future wars. However, after some of the recent meetings, many of us are left wondering: Do they really serve their purpose anymore?
The U.N. General Assembly that took place between Sept. 22 and Sept. 28 should have been days for peace talks and negotiation. However, they were far from it. Instead, the General Assembly was used as a political stomping ground for countries all over the world. No progress was made in terms of ending the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Palestine, the U.S. and Iran, Ukraine and Russia and the Sudanese civil war. Furthermore, no progress was made in bringing justice to the hundreds of war crimes going on across the globe, meaning no progress was also made in establishing the importance of international law.
I think it goes without saying that war is a bad thing; people are injured, people are killed and international economies are put under tremendous stress. If the institutions put in place to protect these things from happening, or push us to peace in a time of conflict, are not doing their job, what function do they serve?
But it’s not just me questioning these notions. King Abdullah II of Jordan took his time at the U.N. assembly to address the conflict in the Middle East and to question the role the U.N. plays in enforcing international law.
“For decades, I have stood before this assembly and warned of the dangers of leaving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict unresolved. But the international community chose to manage the conflict, not confront it,” stated Abdullah II. “If international law can be ignored for decades, then what exactly is that law worth? And how can we enforce it if we won’t even call out its violations?”
Abdullah II, an admitted regional partner with Palestine, is referring to the countless alleged war crimes committed by the Israeli government and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has had a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in his name since November of 2024, yet nothing has come of it.
Abdullah called for U.N. action, saying that “accountability begins when we call things what they are.” This is true; while an arrest warrant already exists for Netanyahu, it cannot be carried out without cooperation from member states.
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also took their time to address international conflicts. However, Takaichi shifted their focus to the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has been going on for four and a half years now (excluding the initial conflict that began in 2014).
Takaichi stated that “a permanent member of the Security Council, with a special responsibility for international peace and security, has initiated an act of aggression against another country, and has vetoed Security Council resolutions concerning its own actions. In this current situation, it must be said that the Security Council is not functioning for international peace.”
If the U.N. and its Security Council is not functioning how they should be, then why do we have it?
The simple answer to that is because we need it. As messy and dysfunctional as the U.N. has been recently, with its issues in following through on bringing peace and justice to nations worldwide, we would still be worse off without it.
Without the U.N., millions of impoverished children worldwide would be left without food and water provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Millions of refugees would be displaced and left without aid provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The world’s already fragile environment would be left without its main leader in sustainable ecological development, the United Nations Environment Program.
So while it’s okay to criticize the dysfunctionality and failures of the U.N.’s push towards global peace, it is also important to recognize how much we as a human race need the U.N., and recognize just how many lives it saves on an annual basis. In the words of the U.N.’s second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, “It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.”
