CHICAGO/LONDON: The 79th Session of the UN General Assembly, which concluded this week, highlighted the UN’s inability to prevent escalating wars, particularly in the Middle East. However, progress was made on other global issues, such as climate change and poverty.
Founded on Oct. 24, 1945, after the Second World War, the UN was created to maintain international peace, prevent conflict and promote friendly relations among countries. Yet, 79 years later, experts acknowledge that the UN remains hampered in achieving its core mandate, particularly due to the disproportionate power wielded by the five permanent members of the Security Council: The US, Russia, China, France and the UK.
Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Middle East Institute, highlighted this imbalance during an interview on “The Ray Hanania Radio Show,” pointing out that while the UN is often blamed for failing to stop conflicts, major global powers have also fallen short in “arresting the spiral down into conflict and a regional war” that is breaking out in the Middle East.
“It’s fine to point a finger to the UN, but the US has not done that great of a job in stopping this,” said Katulis. “And I would also argue a lot of the regional powers and also other global powers like Russia and China haven’t been so good, and it’s for one reason: It’s that the combatants in these conflicts in the Middle East see fit to actually use force, military force, power in that way, in some cases terrorism and terror strikes, to advance their interests. And that’s the unfortunate consequence of the era we live in right now.”
Despite these challenges, the UN continues to make strides in other areas, Katulis said, highlighting how the organization still plays a critical role in addressing societal issues, particularly through its humanitarian work with refugees and efforts in global health.
“They’re doing a lot at a popular level, if you ask Palestinian refugees that live in Jordan and Lebanon, and Gaza and other places,” said Katulis, who this week released his most recent analysis, “Strategic Drift: An Assessment of the Biden Administration’s Middle East Approach,” available from the Middle East Institute.
“Of course, there’s been justifiable criticisms of the quality of that education and what’s being taught, but there’s certain things that we, here in America, because we have such a great system and great economy, just take for granted.”
He argued that while the UN provides “a lot stopgaps, it does save lives.”
Most recently, the UN launched a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio in Gaza, following the enclave’s first confirmed case in 25 years.
To achieve this, the World Health Organization, the UN agency founded in 1948 to promote global health and safety, coordinated efforts using localized ceasefires between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters.
Despite the UN’s benign longstanding mission and its membership of 193 states, the body’s relationship with Israel has grown increasingly strained. This tension peaked earlier this week when Israel declared UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata.
In recent years, experts have questioned the efficacy of the UN, a body originally designed to reflect postwar power structures. These concerns have intensified amid mounting conflict in the Middle East, and are reflected in a loss of confidence in the organization’s ability to mediate effectively.
However, despite rising tensions and an agenda dominated by wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, the UN General Assembly continued to push forward with its broader objectives. It focused on promoting reforms and advocating for greater equality between member states and the powerful Security Council.
“Even though Gaza and the war in Sudan and the war in Ukraine have again dominated the 79th session of the General Assembly, there still have been some positive headlines, or so the UN likes to say,” Ephrem Kossaify, Arab News’ UN correspondent, told “The Ray Hanania Radio Show.”
Kossaify highlighted the adoption of key agreements at the session, including the Pact for the Future, which aims to revitalize the UN’s multilateral system. The General Assembly also adopted other significant declarations, such as one enhancing the role of youth in public decision-making and another addressing global governance of artificial intelligence.
“There’s been a pact that was adopted as well, a political declaration on antimicrobial resistance, which, as Dr. Hanan Balkhy, a Saudi regional chief of the WHO, told Arab News, is the ‘silent epidemic.’ So, at least if you want to see the glass half-full, you can look at these agreements. Even though it took very long, with intense weeks and months of negotiations led by Germany and Namibia, member states have finally been able to come together to sign these three big declarations,” Kossaify said.
Yet for many, including former UN special envoy for Yemen and UN under-secretary-general Jamal Benomar, the declarations are seen as “rehashed and recycled wording from previously agreed UN documents,” filled with “vague and aspirational language” lacking concrete, actionable steps.
A major obstacle remains: The Security Council’s veto power.
Kossaify highlighted the “paralysis” within the UN, highlighting the disconnect between the overpowered permanent members of the Security Council and the increasingly assertive General Assembly, which has amplified its support for Palestine in the face of Israeli violence against civilians in Gaza. Despite growing calls for a ceasefire, the US — one of the five permanent members — has repeatedly vetoed such proposals.
“Out of the 80 vetoes that the US has cast over the past decades, at least 40 of them have been cast to prevent any action against Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and to prevent any action on the ground,” said Kossaify, adding that five of those vetoes have been cast within the past year alone.
“As we saw, the US has vetoed every ceasefire resolution. And even when the Security Council adopted the three resolutions, one having to do with humanitarian relief for the people in Gaza, the US abstained to let it pass, but also undermined it further by saying that Security Council resolutions are non-binding.”
Kossaify said that this created a “huge controversy,” and that the Security Council “is supposed to have the force of international law behind it.
“It is even allowed to use chapter seven to use force in order to implement its resolution. But it has been paralyzed because these five big powers have the prerogative of the veto. They can block any action that doesn’t suit their geopolitical position.”
Kossaify highlighted his interview with Kuwait’s ambassador to the UN, who said that “one or two countries cannot be allowed anymore to block the path of peace when the whole, when so many — the majority of member states want the path to peace.”
Highlighting Arab unity in demanding an end to the Israeli aggression in Gaza and the conflict’s expansion, Kossaify added: “On Gaza, it’s not just the humanitarian suffering that we’re seeing and how it’s really weighing on the conscience of the world. It’s also the ways in which Gaza has shown the real weaknesses of the UN system with its Security Council, the dangers of keeping this veto power without any challenge, and the dysfunction, basically, that it is causing in this multilateral institution, the only one we have in the world.
“Yet despite all the challenges and disagreements and geopolitical divisions, the General Assembly was able to adopt the Pact for the Future, a declaration on the role of youth and a commitment to reform the Security Council, even if it’s just in words.”
Katulis and Kossaify made their comments during tapings of “The Ray Hanania Radio Show,” which is broadcast Thursday on the US Arab Radio Network and sponsored by Arab News.
The show is broadcast live on WNZK AM 690 Radio in Michigan Thursday at 5 p.m. EST, and again the following Monday at 5 p.m. It is available by podcast at ArabNews.com/rayradioshow or at Facebook.com/ArabNews.
