Imagining the world without the United Nations (U.N.) is like imagining France without cheese - impossible - especially if you’re as young as I am, or even as old as most politicians. This organization has had major successes - from helping Iraq overthrow Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial role and putting in place a temporary administration entirely elected by Iraqi citizens to — most recently — rallying nations to come up with political solutions (specifically within the Security Council) to the Syrian crisis and unite in a period of deep distress.
For the past seventy years, this organization has had a vast presence in our global community, taking the forms of agencies, treaties and interventions. For the past nine years, this organization has had a vast presence in my life as well, beginning nine years ago at the Kentucky Model United Nations Assembly (KUNA), and now as a real-life educational experience at Sustainable Development and Climate negotiations.
I grew up under the assumption that this great force of an organization could solve every problem - because in KUNA it did. But as I have experienced these U.N. spaces, I have found myself asking the question “do we actually need the U.N.?”
Before the U.N. existed, the League of Nations ruled the land - which was essentially an exclusive group that failed because it a) did not invite all countries to join and b) failed to prevent the second world war from happening. So in 1945, the U.N. originated on the pillars of peace and security, development, and human rights.
This organization was not really meant to stop conflicts between countries or bring solutions to their problems, but rather to ensure peace at the end of conflicts as well as act as a liaison between all countries of the world.
In regards to humanitarian aid, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees provided food, shelter and security to nearly 12 million refugees around the world in the year 2014 alone and over time has carried out 250 indictments for war crimes.
With regards to the environment, the year 1997 was a better year for it when 192 countries negotiated and formalized the Kyoto Protocol - a legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, laying the basis for a narrative that began to recognize the threat of climate change as a truly urgent, global issue.
And in regards to human rights, the U.N. has kept them relevant and important since the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, arguably making it easier to hold countries (and people) accountable at the same standard as everyone else.
Overall the U.N. acts as a strong line of communication between countries, which is for the most part always open. In a world that is often very disconnected, this is a truly powerful thing.
But while it provides this space for dialogue, it also favors certain countries over others. Specifically within the Security Council, of the consistently fifteen members, five of those are permanent (France, UK, US, China, Russian Federation). Their strong military power and the fact that they are permanent is disproportional to that of every other country in the U.N., devaluing this basis of equality.
In other spaces, I have have felt the disregard of the Secretariat when civil society members are only able to speak when most negotiators are out of the room; I have understood the invisibility cast upon minority groups when the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Norway suggested removing language regarding human rights in the recent Paris climate Agreement; and I have seen the celebration of that agreement completely cover the fact that it is just not enough.
I’ve become hopeless at times when I really consider the non-binding nature of the U.N., but then I ask myself another question, “is it better to talk without great action than to not talk at all?”
And to that, I say yes.
Yes, the U.N. has failed in many ways, but what global entity exists in perfection? Perhaps in my naïveté, I have found too much comfort, and perhaps this is coming from the privilege of existing in a developed nation - I don’t experience the tragedies that call upon the U.N., and I don’t have to deal with the bureaucracy of intervention. But I am still able to consider the groundwork that the U.N. has laid; how it has brought awareness and discussion to invisible issues that might never be talked about.
The U.N. is only the sum of its 193 parts, and everyday those parts help us make connections to understand the value and the purpose of this great big entity. But while I believe that the world is better than it was 70 years ago, there is still much work that needs to be done to fix the flaws within the system.
