![]() Rather than aspiring to unachievable root-and-branch reforms, the UN and its member states should focus on both applying the organisation’s strengths to complex crises (including aspects of the one in Ukraine) and examining its own capabilities to consider how these can be improved in light of emerging threats. Taking a longer view, diplomats and UN officials are conscious that threats ranging from climate change to the weakening of the global non-proliferation regime also promise to increase international instability. The global economic downturn and potential cuts in Western aid allotments in light of the Ukraine war are likely to impinge on UN budgets in the years ahead, perhaps also tipping poorer states into deep recession. UN humanitarian agencies are under enormous strain, attempting to respond to emergencies such as economic collapse in Afghanistan, while also juggling long-running challenges like assisting civilians in non-government-controlled north-western Syria. While diplomats in New York have concentrated on Ukraine, UN peacekeepers in Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo have struggled to deal with escalating violence and deteriorating politics. Yet although the UN system may have shown unexpected resilience in 2022, it has also demonstrated severe and worsening vulnerabilities. For all the talk of a new Cold War, the UN system is still vastly more active than it was for long spells during the West’s decades-long standoff with the Soviet Union, when the Council sometimes went for months at time without so much as meeting. The Council has muddled through the year despite toxic debates about Ukraine, continuing to pass resolutions on countries ranging from Afghanistan to Haiti. Moreover, both Russia and others on the Security Council, including the U.S., have indicated that though profoundly divided over Ukraine, they remain willing to work through the UN on at least some other crises. Secretary-General António Guterres has emerged as one of the few diplomatic figures able to parley constructively with Moscow and Kyiv on issues such as the July deal to allow Ukraine to export grain via the Black Sea. The kinds of reforms called for require alignment of the Security Council’s five permanent members, which is unrealistic, and fail to give sufficient weight to what the conflict has demonstrated about the UN’s enduring strengths. The calls for change are understandable but unlikely to be productive. Some of Russia’s opponents – and Ukraine itself – have called for fundamental reforms to the organisation. For the UN’s many critics, the escalated war has demonstrated both the institution’s powerlessness and its members’ pusillanimity. Moreover, since the late spring, non-Western diplomats, while not condoning Russia’s assault, have appeared increasingly uncomfortable taking strong positions on the conflict. Russia prevented meaningful action in the Security Council, and while the General Assembly passed a series of condemnatory resolutions, these had only modest real-world consequences. In the invasion’s first weeks, most member states stood ready to denounce the invasion (although some, like China and India, hung back) but there were limits to what they could do. ![]() Ukraine will be at the top of the agenda during General Assembly week, but progress on other matters requires attention, too.Īs with all conflicts directly involving one of the Security Council’s veto-wielding members, the UN was inevitably unable to mount a muscular response to Russia’s new aggression. Indeed, the UN continues to both mitigate crises and position itself to meet emerging threats beyond Ukraine. Yet the conflict has not resulted in the paralysis some feared. Even before February, the UN was struggling amid increasing great-power competition and evolving threats to peace and security, and the war has magnified many challenges it faces. ![]() Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, has breached the UN Charter’s measures prohibiting the use of force and is widely reported to have committed atrocities it dismissed condemnations of its actions in the General Assembly and other UN forums. ![]() The war has dominated diplomacy at the UN in the year to date and is the greatest challenge to the body’s principles at least since the U.S. The 2022 gathering will take place in the shadow of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine launched on 24 February. World leaders will gather the week of 19 September in New York for the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level session. ![]()
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