United Nations: A Failure?

Despite horrific suffering in many countries, the world has avoided another devastating global conflict in which tens of millions might die, and for this the UN can take much credit. It has also resisted aggression in regional conflicts in Korea and the Middle East, helping to deter future invasions, and acted as an intermediary in making peace in many other conflicts, e.g the Iran-Iraq war. Consider how much more violent the world might have been without the United Nations.

Human rights abuses usually take place within states, often in civil wars, so the UN has no mandate to intervene directly against them – as it was explicitly set up with a policy of non-interference in internal affairs it is unfair to count this a failure. Nonetheless, it has placed human rights on the international agenda, making billions of people aware of what are considered norms and shaming many regimes into improving their policies. Even China makes great efforts to claim its human rights record is better than that of countries such as the USA, albeit differently defined.

Errors in strategic decision-making are not the fault of the UN secretariat but of its masters in the Security Council. There have been past abuses, but these are used as a stick to beat the UN with by those, principally in the USA, who are against the UN for other reasons. In recent years considerable progress has been made in improving the efficiency and meritocratic nature of the secretariat, although this has been hampered by the failure of the USA to pay its dues, which are needed to compensate those made redundant by restructuring.

Since the end of the Cold War UN decision-making has been much improved, as key votes in the Security Council are no longer likely to result in deadlock between eastern and western blocs. In any case, P5 countries try to avoid using their veto power if at all possible, due to the negative image this creates at home and abroad. Instead the Security Council acts as a forum in which positions can be explained and compromises hammered out, even if action is not necessarily collectively authorised. Clearly the workings of the Security Council could be changed to diminish the importance of the P5, and to make action easier to take, but this does not in itself render the unreformed UN a failure.

Other organisations have also been important in bringing greater peace and prosperity to the world, but none have the authority the UN derives from the participation of almost every state in the world. In international crises the Security Council is the forum for discussion, deal-making, arbitration and understanding. The UN has also made huge contributions to global progress through its agencies, particularly those dealing with refugees, the World Health Organisation and Unicef. By its efforts smallpox has been eliminated, healthcare improved and education promoted. Such programmes are not often noticed, but the UN’s responsibility for them should be seen as a key part of its success.