There is a tattered and torn, framed United Nations flag that has pride of place not far from the entrance to the UN Headquarters in New York. It is a salutary reminder of a bomb attack on 19 August 2003, which took the lives of 22 UN personnel and wounded more than 150. The bomb had been planted at Baghdad’s Canal Hotel, which was the headquarters for the organisation’s operations in the aftermath of the illegal US military intervention in Iraq.

Each year, UN staff across the world attend solemn ceremonies to mark what had been the deadliest attack on its civilian personnel.

Until now.

How many tattered flags may there be one day for the 274 humanitarian workers killed so far by the Israeli military in Gaza since 7 October? Of those, 197 have been UN personnel – a grisly new record – with 193 of them from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The grim statistics of avoidable ‘collateral damage’ are collated by the UN and yet barely figure in the considerations of most Western politicians and media. It has been a different matter when non-Palestinian humanitarian workers have been killed, or when Israel makes unsubstantiated claims about UNRWA workers being members of Hamas. The UN body’s facilities, schools, colleges and clinics have also been obliterated.

The veto problem

When Secretary-General António Guterres moved into the 38th Floor of UN HQ in January 2017, he believed his biggest impediment would be President Donald Trump, who had no time for the UN. There was a Faustian pact between the two: ‘don’t attack me and I won’t attack you’. But Guterres’s real problems began after Trump left the White House, when two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, first Russia (with Chinese support), then the US (with British support) vetoed resolutions over Ukraine and Gaza respectively. It didn’t seem to matter to these member states that they were effectively ripping international law to shreds by, in the case of Russia, invading a sovereign nation, and for Israel, flagrantly breaching the Geneva Conventions by failing in its duty to provide ‘supplies essential to the survival of the civilian population of the occupied territory’.

The UN has seemed powerless to act against the liberal use of the veto in circumstances that would horrify its founders. In the case of Gaza, the civilian death toll surpassed 38,000 in the first eight months of the war, according to the Ministry of Health. Through all of this, the UN has proved incapable of protecting either civilians or its own staff.

The UN and its Secretary-General find themselves alternatively imprisoned by a post-war UN system that was not designed to rely heavily on five permanent members – the US, Britain, France, Russia and China – and their use of their unique veto power. The veto was designed for use in extremes and in furtherance of upholding the Charter, not negating it, which has become the new norm. The organization does have in its moral armoury a whole panoply of resolutions and institutions, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, designed to uphold international law. It is just that it seems incapable of coping with member states that refuse to acknowledge this and then act with galling impunity, such as Israel. ‘SG’ said Ban Ki-moon, doesn’t just stand for Secretary-General, it stands for ‘Scapegoat’! Added to this, the permanent members remain the victors of the Second World War, with no permanent representation for Africa, Latin and Central America and the Indo Pacific.

The UN has seemed powerless to act against the liberal use of the veto in circumstances that would horrify its founders

Toothless

This is not to say the UN has been silent on Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. As Andrew Gilmour, a former United Nations Assistant-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, says: ‘The international system, centred around the United Nations, has been clear about the breadth, extent and duration of numerous war crimes and atrocities committed by Israel.’ It’s the unstinting diplomatic and military support for Israel’s offensive from almost all Western powers that has shocked the rest of the world, he explains. ‘It has led to the greatest divide between the “West” and the “rest” we have ever seen, and I am not sure how we can reverse that. With the “rest” accusing – with much evidence – the West of extraordinary hypocrisy and double standards.’

Hypocrisy and double standards notwithstanding, the UN has struggled even when it has the support of the vast majority of member states. On 2 March this year the Security Council, with a US abstention this time, finally passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire. But the US has repeatedly determined that ‘binding UN resolutions’ aren’t really binding at all. Take the Secretary-General's attempt to override the paralysis caused by the US veto on the Security Council. This manifested itself in another resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and access to humanitarian aid. This too is supposed to be binding and yet the carnage continued as Israel crossed President Biden’s own ‘red-line’ in Rafah and started bombing there too. In reality, the UN does not have the military power (adequate to enforce binding resolutions). If one is ignored, the Security Council would have to meet again and decide what to do about the violation and agree on an enforcement action.

When the Security Council is grid-locked, the General Assembly – the UN’s main policy-making body made up of all member states – has the power to initiate the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution. This has been activated on previous occasions, most notably during the Korean war when it authorized force against North Korea, and latterly in resolving member states to implement widespread sanctions against apartheid South Africa.

The Palestinians command widespread support amongst a majority of member states, most of whom recognise the state of Palestine, but it appears to have missed a trick by not deploying the maximum leverage afforded by ‘Uniting for Peace’. This could be because none of their immediate neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf States and the near useless Arab League are much minded to deliver anything stronger than the occasional remonstration to the Israelis.

Failure of leadership

If the UN, charged with upholding international law, is powerless to halt Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza, it begs the question: is the organization fit for purpose? The feeling of impotence with each and every outrage affects those who have given their all to an organization to which the rest of the world looks for justice and effective action.

For Gilmour, the real blame lies not at the feet of the UN but with the US and its allies. The UN system to its credit, he says, has tried to do what it can to both alleviate and call attention to the staggering levels of suffering being deliberately inflicted on an entire population. ‘Although the UN is powerless to get aid in, or to stop the mass killing, people respect the UN Secretary-General for speaking out,’ he says, ‘not to mention the charges and rulings from both the International Criminal Court and the ICJ regarding probable war crimes and worse.’

Through all of this, the UN has proved incapable of protecting either civilians or
its own staff

But, say the UN’s critics, is condemnation alone good enough? What is the point in making bold statements if there are no consequences? For them – the UN having failed to intervene in the Rwanda genocide in 1994 or the mass killings in Srebrenica – it is difficult to see how an organization that has repeatedly stood on the sidelines to some the worst human rights abuses over the last 50 years can remain relevant today. Another former senior UN official, who couldn’t reveal his identity, and who has just stepped down after 30 years working for the organization, takes a less generous view: ‘Defend the idea, but not the institution!’ He believes that there has been ‘a real failure of leadership’ by Guterres, who may have spoken out but has been wanting on direct mediation efforts or even temporarily re-locating to the Middle East to show determined leadership in the face of US and Israeli intransigence. That same ponderous, over-cautious, defensive response was on display by Guterres over Ukraine. In April 2022, a group of more than 200 former senior UN officials wrote to the Secretary-General, warning him that unless he did more to achieve a ceasefire and peace negotiations in Ukraine, the UN risked not just irrelevance, but its existence.

The UN’s older sibling the League of Nations famously collapsed over its inability to prevent World War Two, as well as its failure to stand by Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia, as Mussolini’s troops invaded. Today, the United Nations conversely is not about to collapse; it is seamlessly interwoven into the everyday lives of millions with its food programmes, sanitation projects and public health projects. For all too many in the Global South, the UN remains a vital lifeline. If it wasn’t there it would have to be re-invented. But, in the current climate, who exactly would do this?

There is no doubting the organization’s shortcomings that have brought into question both its legitimacy and effectiveness. Nor can there be much doubt that its current leadership does not have the capacity, verve or intent to push through the urgent reforms that might make the UN more effective and also representative of the world in which we live now.