The intergovernmental organisation has failed to keep the world safe, and instead gives a platform to authoritarians and rogue states
President Zelensky is in New York City this week to speak to President Biden and address the UN at its General Assembly. The global organisation was set up after World War II to act as a force for good to police disputes, keep warring factions apart and to help those who cannot help themselves.
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, indicates what an impotent agency it has become. Rather than preventing conflict, it gives a platform to authoritarians and rogue states.
The purposes and the reasons for establishing the UN as an intergovernmental organisation were to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and serve as a centre for harmonising the actions of nations. But it is powerless, in part because the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have a veto on substantive resolutions. Among those members is Russia, a country which Putin has said funds the brutal Wagner group of mercenaries and which has engaged in an illegal conflict with its neighbour. As such, the UN cannot sanction any members of the “axis of evil”, which also includes Iran and North Korea.
The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab has alleged that thousands of children from Ukraine have been sent to Russian “re-education” camps since the invasion. The Russian President has threatened nuclear war, and his forces have destroyed infrastructure in Ukraine including schools and hospitals, despite their being protected under the Geneva Conventions which the UN is supposed to uphold.