In years like this, the ineffectiveness of a forum that serves little more than giving a pulpit to the world’s worst tyrants and allowing powerless words to resonate becomes particularly tragically visible. These days we see how calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan are falling in vain.
Sánchez calls for the elimination of the veto in the UN Security Council and the holding of a peace conference on Palestine
In times of peace, or rather in times when active conflicts seem more distant to Europeans and Americans, the perception of the United Nations General Assembly generally oscillates between discomfort and waste. In New York, it’s the week of the big traffic jam between the parade of world automobile leaders and their processions of advisors and journalists: a coming and going of speeches, interviews, purchases and discounts prizes often financed by the winner.
For those of us who have seen it up close, it is an unedifying spectacle from which rarely anything useful comes of it. The session itself is generally reduced to a text symbolically approved by the Assembly, to a half-word, better or worse, said by the President of the United States, to the speeches of the Spanish President and other Europeans in moments little attention, and at a moment of protest. or the emotion that a few seconds of video can arouse.
But in years like this, the ineffectiveness of a forum which only serves to give a pulpit to the worst tyrants in the world and to allow powerless words to resonate is particularly tragically visible. These days we see how calls for ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan (where another genocide is underway that does not seem to correspond to Western partisan struggles, little interested in human suffering), fail.
None of these conflicts are the fault of the UN or are easy to resolve for any politician who tries in good faith. As we saw in the Ukraine war, even when the US and EU are united in the same position, they cannot stop a massacre. For those who continually invoke the hypocrisy of acting against Vladimir Putin and not Benjamin Netanyahu, the truth is that neither international action nor inaction has stopped either.
Political responsibility lies above all with the most powerful and richest states, not only in the West, but also in the affected regions, which often wash their hands of it or take the bloodiest side. The United Nations General Assembly, which is ultimately a reflection of the world, exposes the failings and shame of leaders and the countries they represent.
We often talk about reforming the Security Council so that it can adopt resolutions in the most serious cases instead of being limited by the veto power of the United States, Russia and China, in particular. But it’s worth asking at this point whether this would really change anything, as the world in which the powers at least attempted to reach consensus in the Council to legitimize their actions or punish those of others seems to be fading. The idea that institutions matter more than temporary leaders is shattered due to the weakness or inaction of organizations created to ensure peace and rules and the strengthening of destructive leaders with no limits to their irresponsibility and even their wrong.
The UN is a mirror that reveals the evils and worst characters of our world every September of waste and speech. More than another speech or resolution in the General Assembly, the hope is that next year there will be fewer disastrous leaders entitled to the pulpit.
