“The Core Mission of the United Nations is Neglected”
“Secretary General Guterres chases vanity projects instead of the U.N. purpose for peace”
The U.N. General Assembly will convene in New York on September 23, 2024, welcoming world leaders and diplomats from the 193 countries represented at the UN for a week filled with speeches and minimal world relevance, a common outcome of these meetings. Prior to the meeting, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres held his pet project, "Summit of the Future," in overstated fanfare. The Secretary General billed the summit as a "once in a generation opportunity" to change human history by restarting international cooperation and embracing multilateralism. The pact included 56 actions, including aforementioned multilateralism, but also including upholding the U.N. Charter, peacekeeping, climate change, disarmament, regulating artificial intelligence, and reforms to both financial institutions and the U.N. Security Council. At the end of the summit, the U.N. assembly adopted the "Pact of the Future" as a non-binding measure, highlighting the U.N.'s impotence and Secretary General Guterres' failure to fulfill the basic role of his position or the U.N.
The two world wars, which resulted in unparalleled casualties even among the winners, inspired the creation of the United Nations. The goal was to establish an organization that could avert wars, establish a framework for conflict resolution without violence, and if disagreements arise, employ global cooperation to halt aggression. Economic and social advancement is part of the charter, but the main role of the U.N. is to promote world peace and prevent war. The Security Council, comprising fifteen countries, wields significant power in the current U.N. organization. Ten non-permanent members hold two-year terms, while five permanent members, comprised of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represent the five victor countries. These five permanent members possess veto power, which allows them to halt any U.N. action regardless of the decisions made by the other fourteen members. This power is a primary source of dysfunction in the United Nations, hindering its ability to uphold the fundamental charter goal of maintaining global peace.
The General Assembly, which comprises 193 nations around the world and is considered the main policy body of the United Nations, is the other part of the U.N. The U.N. Secretary General, not necessarily an executive like a president or prime minister, leads the United Nations as its chief administrator. According to the rules set forth in the U.N. charter, the Secretary General cannot be a citizen of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council. The U.N. Charter also states that the Secretary General “may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security." Although the Secretary General cannot set the agenda for the Security Council or override a veto, their primary role is to work closely with it to maintain global peace and security.
The primary mission of the UN is to prevent war, promote peace, and intervene when necessary to end a conflict. There are 45 conflicts in the world today, with the three most significant being the Ukraine War, Sudan, and the Gaza War, which combined are creating about 2,000 casualties a day. Against this backdrop, U.N. Secretary General Guterres is focusing his influence and efforts on the "Pact for the Future," relegating global peace and security to a secondary concern, with climate change and structural reform at the core of Guterres' agenda. Even if climate change is considered a member nation's primary concern, the U.N.'s purpose is peace and security, not climate change, AI regulation, or financial reform; it is peace and security again. While some of these issues may have a connection to long-term security concerns, they do not impact the current situation, where conflicts claim the lives of at least 2,000 people daily. The UN should focus on these issues. This is also their core mission.
One could argue that the U.N. is capable of multitasking, provided it operates competently and prioritizes its primary mission. However, the U.N. lacks competent leadership and management, and it should avoid excessive focus on peripheral issues that may or may not affect future peace and security. All other endeavors, until the U.N. can competently address its core role, are a waste of resources and potentially belong to another international body.
Alternatively, they could become national issues for negotiation among nations, who then formulate their own policies to address their respective national priorities. With adequate reason, supporters of the U.N. expansive mission will argue that the five permanent Security Council members' veto power, introduction of bipolar politics, and obstruction of any serious attempts to bring about peace have broken the U.N. organizational structure.
Critics of the Security Council are right, but it is the U.N.'s structure, which the Secretary General accepted by accepting the position. Part of his “Pact of the Future” is Security Council reform, but is this really a serious focus for Secretary Guterres? The Security Council, with its five members empowered to veto any proposed reform, must approve it. Institutions rarely give up power, so it is doubtful that the permanent five would take on any serious reform, and even if they did, how does having a rotating group of veto-wielding countries on the Security Council improve the prospect of peace? Hint: It doesn’t. This reform effort squanders focus by ignoring the UN's basic core functions.
Another point to consider is that Secretary General Guterres is not even committed to using his position to promote peace, as he rarely travels to Russia or Ukraine to use his position to elevate serenity. He has not visited Ukraine since 2023, nor has he been to Russia since 2022. He has not visited Israel since the war started in Gaza and has only been to Egypt to visit the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip to view relief supplies destined for Gaza. Guterres has not visited Sudan since 2017. His primary role as chief administrator is to promote the U.N.'s mission, and he has shown that he is not willing to jeopardize his personal reputation or safety in the pursuit of peace, unlike U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, who lost his life in a plane crash during a personal peace mission in the Congo in 1961.
Whether it was disregard for the U.N. mission that he accepted or his fear for his personal reputation and safety to do the hard work for peace, Secretary General Guterres is just another long list of U.N. Secretary Generals who are little more than perfunctory bureaucrats who serve a bureaucracy for the needs of the bureaucracy and are not set about meeting the purpose of why the U.N. was created in the first place. The excuse that the organizational structure is ill-suited for the organizational purpose cannot be an excuse for why Secretary Guterres and other Secretary General’s cannot radically pursue peace and security.
If the structure of the Security Council presents a barrier, the Secretary General should utilize their platform to relentlessly advocate for peace. They should also leverage their position to exert external pressure on the Security Council, compelling them to either adopt a stance against peace or devise a viable solution for the U.N. to resolve the conflict. Peace, whether through negotiating a settlement, peacekeeping intervention missions similar to Kosovo, or intervention to stop a hostile invasion like the Korean War, is hard and it takes work, but it is not an excuse not to try or even more outrageously ignore the pursuit of peace to chase vanity projects that are not part of the U.N.’s and its Secretary General's core purpose.
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References:
https://www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/09/1154581
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/09/21/world/unga-general-assembly-world-leaders-intl-latam