Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

The United Nations’s predecessor was formed in 1920 following World War I and was intended to create a global forum that promoted cooperation over violence and war. One of the primary motivations for replacing the League of Nations with the U.N. in 1946 was that the League failed to prevent the wars that had ensued after its creation.

The inherent issue with the League was its inability to enforce and guarantee its core values, a trait passed on to its successor.

One of these supposed core values is democracy: a fundamental principle of the United Nations. With 193 member states, one would assume that the U.N. has an equitable political process that ensures every voice is heard and considered equally. Yet the true power of the organization is reserved for the United Nations Security Council, which comprises 15 members with five permanent members: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China.

Also known as the P5, the council’s permanent members hold veto power and dominate conversations regarding foreign policy. The P5’s responsibility to safeguard international peace and security has repeatedly come second to their own agendas, and their influence is used as a deterrent from their own moral infractions.

Cole Ross| Digital Design Editor

These members wield a disproportionate level of authority over the U.N. that hinders the organization’s potential to decenter politics when pursuing international harmony and flaunts the unequal power structures it was built on.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the Israeli government’s barrage of aggressions on Gaza, a resolution to enact a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza came to the Security Council. Thirteen members voted for the proposal, but all it took was one member state — the U.S. — to veto the resolution.

Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have taken to the streets to protest the unmistakable horrors facing Gaza. But even after mass protests, boycotts and calls for a cease-fire, the U.S. dismissed any slim sign of hope for Gaza without any repercussions for doing so.

Like many of the Security Council’s members, for America, the U.N. is just another platform to assert its sovereignty over the world. The U.S. cannot pride itself on being a moral example or a standard of modern democratic ideals when it has consistently confirmed it is driven by self-interest more than anything else.

As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and a prevailing force in international politics, the U.S. shares the brunt of the responsibility for the disappointing stagnation of the U.N. and its inability to protect its constituents. Yet, seemingly, it simply perpetuates the very issues the organization is crippling from.

The Human Rights Council, another council of the U.N., reveals a similar hypocrisy. The council, endowed to protect human rights, has failed consistently to enforce humanitarian standards worldwide and hold nations accountable for the infringement of these standards. Members of this council serve three-year terms but have included serial human rights violators in the past.

China, a current member of the council, is one such example. For years, China has been under global scrutiny for its abuse against the Uyghurs, an ethnic and religious minority in the country. The Human Rights Council requires its member states to be subjected to a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) every 4.5 years to review their human rights history. The process allows states to hear recommendations and concerns, but it is ultimately up to the state to implement changes. However, China has repeatedly “demonstrated its bad faith engagement with the process,” essentially rejecting years of recorded evidence against itself and facing no penalty for doing so.

Herein lies a weakness of the U.N.: its members are given the freedom to engage with the organization in protecting the peace elsewhere, but not when it interferes with their political interests and affairs within their own borders.

When it comes to enforcing both resolutions and punishments, the U.N. is virtually powerless.

In the weeks following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the director for the New York Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, resigned from his position. Mokhiber incited the organization’s recurrent failure to execute an actionable response in Gaza as well as previous genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kurdistan and Myanmar as his reason for leaving.

He also claimed the U.S. and the U.K., among other Western nations, were “wholly complicit in the horrific assault” on Gaza for falling short of their duties outlined in the Geneva Convention and for refusing to condemn Israel for its actions.

The U.N.’s authority and strength rely on the fervor of its member states, especially those that are more dominant like the U.S. When its members take a step back, ignore conflicts requiring urgent action and value politics over people, the U.N. becomes nothing more than a performance on the global stage.

As conflicts in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and many others escalate, the U.N. has proven its inability to intervene.

The U.N. repeatedly fails the world but is allowed to take center stage in every major conflict despite its futility during them. If its member states fail to respect its resolutions and laws, the U.N.’s place in the international arena must be replaced by an organization that holds governments and groups accountable for their actions with more than a slap on the wrist.

It is past time we question the need for the U.N. if it cannot uphold its founding principles or maintain the status quo. If the U.N. is not able to collectively defend its vulnerable members from harm, prevent future conflicts and enforce international law to the highest extent, its relevance must be reexamined.

Christy Joshy is a freshman International Relations and Accounting major. She can be reached at cjoshy@syr.edu.

Published on February 7, 2024 at 12:42 am