• ‘The Security Council, and the UN as a whole, are rapidly becoming relics of a bygone era, much like the League of Nations,’ Elbasri tells Anadolu
• Reforms to UN are a must and require global thinking that is not dominated by the superpowers, says analyst and author Mitchell Plitnick

• One of the strongest voices for UN reforms has been Turkish President Erdogan, who has pushed for years to change the structure of UN organs

🎙️ Reforms to the UN are a must and require global thinking that is not dominated by the superpowers, says analyst and author Mitchell Plitnick

❗ Failure in Gaza test: Is the UN no longer fit for purpose?

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— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) September 23, 2024

ISTANBUL

World leaders are gathering in New York for this year’s UN General Assembly at a time when dark clouds are hovering over the very legitimacy and relevance of the UN and its organs.

Israel’s war on Gaza and the utter devastation it has inflicted on Palestinians for almost a year has raised questions about the UN’s efficacy like never before, undermining both its standing and global trust in such international institutions.

For experts such as Aicha Elbasri, the UN’s inability to deter Israel represents a broader failure of the organization and exposes the glaring flaws in its structure, nowhere more so than in the UN Security Council, where the US has repeatedly wielded its veto power to shield its ally.

“The Security Council’s failure to act decisively and speak with one voice in the face of the daily, globally broadcast mass massacre of Palestinians in Gaza exposes the irrelevance and moral bankruptcy of this institution,” Elbasri, a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, told Anadolu.

“Its inability to enforce any resolution to halt the Israeli assault on civilians has shattered any remaining illusions about its capacity to maintain international peace and security.”

Elbasri pointed out that two permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the US and the UK, “are not merely passive bystanders but are actively complicit in enabling and abetting what amounts to genocide.”

“The genocide in Gaza has exposed the council for what it has always been: a tool for the powerful, eroding whatever credibility it once had as a global arbiter of peace,” she asserted.

Her views were echoed by Mitchell Plitnick, a political analyst and author, who said that the UN has once again fallen short of fulfilling its main objectives.

“(The UN) was created to make sure genocide doesn’t happen, to at least try to prevent wars, and to put the world on a path where diplomacy was the preferred solution to any sort of disagreement,” he told Anadolu.

“That clearly has failed and it has failed for a long time.”

UN Security Council ‘inherently limited by its structure’

Both Elbasri and Plitnick pointed to the flaws in the structure of the UN and its key organs like the Security Council.

The US veto of multiple resolutions calling for cease-fires or humanitarian pauses in Gaza underlined “the structural flaws of the Security Council,” said Elbasri.

“The genocidal campaign in Gaza leaves no doubt about the fact that the Security Council is inherently limited by its structure, which prioritizes the interests of the five permanent members (P5) – the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK – over the broader international community,” she said.

“This design reflects the post-World War II order, where the victors sought to maintain their dominance in global security decisions. As a result, the council increasingly struggles to address conflicts where one of these powers is involved, effectively sidelining humanitarian concerns when they clash with the geopolitical interests of a P5 member.

“The Gaza test stands as undeniable proof that the UN, particularly the Security Council, is no longer fit for purpose.”

The General Assembly, on the other hand, is nothing “without the backing of the Security Council,” said Elbasri.

“The General Assembly has passed resolutions calling for a cease-fire, (but) these resolutions are non-binding and lack enforcement power … The assembly has limited means to influence the situation on the ground,” she said.

Plitnick emphasized that there remains “a clear structural reason” for the failings of the UN and its Security Council.

“The fact that the US can stand up against 14 other countries on the Security Council and make sure that they can’t take any action is a flaw that has to be remedied,” he said.

“It’s not just the US, so none of those five countries should be able to do that … It’s mostly been the US and Russia, and it needs to stop, and there needs to be reform.”

What needs to happen, he added, is for there to be a General Assembly that has much more influence and a Security Council with less powers.

“I do think the idea of a veto at the Security Council needs to be gotten rid of,” he asserted.

As an alternative, there could be a system based on a two-thirds majority or some other mechanism, he said.

Crisis of leadership

Apart from structural limitations, the UN also faces a crisis of “weak and biased leadership,” particularly when it comes to Israel and its catastrophic war on Gaza, according to Elbasri.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has “catastrophically failed to take a firm and unequivocal stance on the Gaza crisis,” she said.

“While his condemnation of Hamas was immediate and explicit, his vague and evasive statements regarding Israel reveal not just weakness but a profound bias,” she said, calling out the UN chief for “hiding behind emotional humanitarian rhetoric and employing passive language.”

Guterres, she added, has “never once named Israel as the occupier, aggressor, or perpetrator of the atrocities being broadcast live to the world.”

“He claimed to have invoked Article 99, but in reality, he squandered a vital opportunity to use this provision to explicitly warn of genocide in Gaza,” said Elbasri.

“His most glaring failure, along with his special adviser Alice Nderitu, lies in their exclusion of Palestine from the UN’s early warning mechanism for genocide prevention, despite glaring red flags.”

The UN chief and other officials have “refused to even utter the word ‘genocide,’ despite their mandate obliging them to issue early warnings,” she said.

“Guterres will be remembered as the secretary-general who presided over the Israeli genocide, the worst of moral crimes he failed to even acknowledge by name.”

Is there any hope for reforms?

Calls for reforms to the UN have been ringing out around the world for years now, with one of the strongest proponents being Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with his motto, “The world is bigger than five.”

For almost a decade, Erdogan has repeatedly pushed for changes to the structure of UN organs, particularly the Security Council.

Today, calls for reforms have only become louder and more urgent in nature after what the world has witnessed in Israel’s war on Gaza.​​​​​​​

However, for Elbasri, the UN’s “catastrophic failure in Gaza underscores the impossibility of so-called reform.”

“The Security Council … was deliberately designed for paralysis and deadlock. Any genuine reform would require the P5 to relinquish their veto power and allow for broader geographical representation – an unrealistic prospect, as it would strip these nations of their entrenched dominance. It’s akin to disarming a policeman,” she said.

“This structural flaw reveals that the Security Council, and the UN as a whole, are rapidly becoming relics of a bygone era, much like the League of Nations.”

The League of Nations, she added, collapsed due to its inability to prevent World War II, and “the UN is following the same trajectory,” she warned.

“The institution is increasingly irrelevant, trapped in post-World War II geopolitical dynamics that no longer reflect today’s global realities,” said Elbasri.

“Without reform – an impossibility under its current structure – the UN is destined to collapse into irrelevance, just as the League of Nations did before it. It’s not just failing – it’s becoming obsolete in light of the shifting world order.”

Plitnick agreed on the pressing need for reforms to the UN and its structure, but pointed to the lack of action toward this objective.

“I think part of the reason for that is that the people who are interested haven’t really organized very well … to build a global movement to really demand reform at the UN,” he said.

“You would have to build that over the course of decades in order for it to have enough power to really make a change … Something like that could eventually lead to reform of the UN.”

There needs to be a “global decision that we need to make a change in the UN and there needs to be global thinking about it, that is not dominated by the superpowers,” he added.