- 08:30
This week, heads of state are taking the stage at the United Nations General Assembly. The routine is familiar: solemn speeches, pledges for peace, calls for multilateralism. Yet behind the diplomatic pomp and cameras focused on New York, everyone knows the real negotiations are happening elsewhere – in hushed corridors and behind closed doors.
Eighty years after its founding, the UN faces an unprecedented credibility crisis. General de Gaulle once dismissed the institution as a “machin” – literally, a “thing.” The word, disdainful yet eerily prophetic, still resonates today. After all, what remains of the founding ideals when countless resolutions are gathering dust?
From the Middle East to Ukraine, from Yemen to Sudan, the UN keeps producing resolutions without managing to enforce them. The Security Council, paralyzed by veto powers, has become a stage for constant clashes between major powers. The General Assembly, meanwhile, issues moral condemnations that are quickly forgotten once passed.
Lebanon is a perfect example of this inability to act. For years, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been tasked with enforcing Resolution 1701, which bans armed Hezbollah presence south of the Litani River (and elsewhere). In practice, the Shia militia has established hundreds of military sites, turning the area into a sprawling battlefield beyond any control. The Blue Helmets monitor and sometimes report, but in the end, achieve little — and occasionally face outright aggression from the militia’s pro-Iranian “supporters.”
Given the circumstances, one question comes to mind: what is the real purpose of the UN today? It certainly provides a global stage and carries out some humanitarian operations. But when it comes to conflicts and peacekeeping, its role shrinks year after year, leaving many to see it as more of a bystander than a player.
Looking back, the Organization’s record is staggering. The Korean War in the 1950s, the Vietnam and Gulf Wars… each time, thousands, even millions of deaths, and utter ineffectiveness.
The same goes for the Rwandan genocide and the resounding failure of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR): 800,000 dead. During the conflict in former Yugoslavia, at the heart of Europe, Srebrenica (1995) saw 8,000 people massacred in a “UN-protected” zone, under the helpless gaze of Dutch Blue Helmets.
Not to mention the disasters in Somalia, which the UN pulled out of in haste, or in Darfur, both of which descended into near-medieval chaos. The latest fiasco: Ukraine, where the Organization struggles even to have a political presence.
The problem is that all of this comes at a high cost: the UN and its agencies (WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, UNDP, UNESCO, etc.) spend between $50 and $60 billion a year, funded by member state contributions as well as public and private donations. On Monday, Donald Trump didn’t hold back at the UN General Assembly, calling out the Organization for, among other things, backing the “immigration policies” in the United States – which, incidentally, happens to be its largest contributor.
The UN is not doomed to remain this “machin” – a thing with no grip on reality. But it must reinvent itself, or risk fading into indifference. As long as resolutions remain ineffective and deployed forces cannot carry out their missions, distrust will only grow – along with the danger of a world ruled solely by power struggles.
As Jean de La Fontaine once said, “Nothing costs more than powerlessness.”
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