Time to Reform the United Nations

EDGY OPTIMIST BY Obinna Chima

The United Nations (UN) was created in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security.
The UN tries to accomplish this by working to prevent conflict, helping parties in conflict make peace, deploying peacekeepers, and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. The UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security.

However, recent global developments have intensified calls for far-reaching reforms of the New York-based organisation. The conflict involving Iran and the attacks on the Middle East country by the United States and Israel, even while diplomatic negotiations were reportedly ongoing, raises fresh questions about the UN’s ability to restrain powerful nations.

At the same time, escalating wars and geopolitical tensions across several regions, especially with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now in its fourth year, continue to test the credibility of the international system. Yet in many of these situations, the UN appears unable to move beyond issuing press statements condemning the attacks.

Since the joint Israeli and US attacks on Iran and the Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel and the Gulf Region last Saturday, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and heads of UN agencies have been condemning the incident.

Guterres declared that the military escalation in the region undermines international peace and security, stating that all Member States must “respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the United Nations,” which prohibits “the threat of the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The UN Chief has also called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation, warning that a failure to do so risks a wider regional conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.
Equally, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in his reaction, stressed that bombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but “only result in death, destruction and human misery.”
Yet beyond these strong words and repeated calls for restraint, the organisation has shown little capacity to enforce compliance or stop the escalating hostilities.

The unfortunate thing about the ongoing hostilities is that they commenced even as American and Iranian officials were participating in Omani-mediated talks aimed at preventing further escalation between the countries.
These actions represent grave violations of Article 2 of the UN Charter and international humanitarian law and further escalate a conflict whose human cost is borne overwhelmingly by the common people.

The strike on a girls’ primary school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, that killed over 160 schoolgirls and injured many others, the targeting of civilians, educational facilities, and medical institutions constitute grave violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law.

Wars have dire economic consequences. For instance, tourism has been shattered. Travel plans around the region shelved. Oil prices have risen with Brent crude hovering around $85 per barrel. Gas prices are now higher, meaning more spending for the common man. Already in faraway Nigeria, the pump price of petrol has been adjusted upward, and citizens would bear the cost. Some countries, like Myanmar, are already preparing to ration oil and gas supplies. In the same vein, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Gulf countries are stranded and unable to return to their home countries. The ongoing war even worsens the situation in Gaza, where the entire 2.1 million population is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death. In Lebanon, people are being displaced. This is why the UN must act fast to stop the ongoing hostilities.
History shows that bombing may remove rulers but rarely improves the lives of ordinary people. This is evident in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Since the First World War, which saw the creation of the League of Nations in 1920 and thereafter, the UN, rules have been made to bring order to chaos, and human societies have long sought to craft and formalise them.
The Charter of the UN, its founding document, places emphasis on the territorial integrity and political independence of states. These widely agreed principles are meant to prevent war, especially wars of choice.

But the unequal nature of the Security Council, persistence of proxy wars and violent conflict have shown how enforcement of international law remains uneven, especially when powerful states act outside collective mechanisms.
That is why given the profound changes in global politics, economics and security since its establishment 80 years ago, the United Nations must reform its structures and processes to align its goals with present realities.

The world of 1945, when the organisation was created, is vastly different from that of the 21st century. Yet many of the UN’s institutional arrangements and decision-making mechanisms still reflect a bygone era, failing to adequately respond to the complex challenges and power dynamics that have emerged over the past several decades.

The main focus should be the reform of the Security Council, the most powerful UN institution with the most potential for bringing change. The UN Charter was written as a result of the bloodiest conflict in modern history, and what should be learnt from that is that the international system should not wait until after wars end to build institutions that ensure peace.

The UN Security Council should be the cornerstone of peacekeeping policy and the growing trend of unilateral interventions severely erodes the aspiration of collective security founded in the UN system. It also sets a dangerous precedent that larger powers can usurp smaller ones should they choose to do so.

They must work towards enthroning an international system where military intervention is not governed by the temperaments of individuals, as opposed to an international framework.
The world becomes a far less stable place when policy is based on the mood of a powerful President instead of multilateral decision-making.

Reforming the UN is necessary to restore predictability and legitimacy to international decision-making.
Finally, all parties must immediately cease hostilities and resume diplomatic dialogue, as there is no viable alternative to the peaceful settlement of disputes.