Five reasons the United Nations still matters at 70

It is fashionable to be a United Nations sceptic but as the UN turns 70 on October 24, it still has a role to play in our lives. Here are five reasons why. 

Global norms matter

The United Nations, its many organs and agencies and the platforms they have created have enabled the governments of the world to get together and establish norms on a hitherto unimaginable range of concerns. From fixing postal rates and shipping regulations to creating safeguards for nuclear reactors to enjoining Member States and other conflict parties to include women at the peace table to establishing the Sustainable Development Goals, UN institutions and initiatives have helped nation-states find areas of agreement and codify or institutionalise them. 

Thus, over 70 years, we can say that by and large, around the world, we share certain values. Some examples: Globally, we pay tribute to human rights and democracy; violations and transgressions are glaring aberrations that we condemn. We agree about a host of functional protocols and procedures—from civil aviation to currency conversion—that make our live easier. We agree that trafficking—in humans, drugs, money and arms—is wrong, and ostensibly commit ourselves to ending the practice. These shared norms have created what international relations scholars call ‘international society’—where we come together as a community through this sharing. 

Consider the alternative: We share no norms and are governed purely by self-interest. We debate and battle over small everyday adjustments. The playing field is not level and in the absence of common values, might prevails every time. Therefore, just for its role in the creation and promotion of global norms, the UN is important to us. 

Is our compliance perfect? Of course not, but it is only the presence of shared norms that allows us to say that and possibly, penalise non-compliance in many different ways. 

Talk-shops are better than battlefields

Every year, in this season, the leaders of the world congregate in New York and make speeches before the General Assembly—the plenary session where all the Member States of the UN sit together and listen to each other. The speeches are largely symbolic and sometimes our attention is diverted to the side-lines—who met whom, for how long, to discuss what—but the gathering symbolises our collective commitment to peace and cooperation. This is true even when our statements at the Assembly are hostile and combative! The side-lines are important because they offer an opportunity for informal discussion or establishing personal connections between leaders that can enable diplomatic breakthroughs. 

The United Nations succeeds the League of Nations, whose founding followed from the last of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918): “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” The League failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War, but its failure fortified the determination of the world to set up a better collective security organisation. “Collective security” is the idea that an attack against one of us, is an attack on all of us; that our security is connected and interdependent and that we will therefore, respond together to such an attack. In June 1945, the countries of the world assembled in San Francisco to sign the Charter of the United Nations, which came into force October 24, 1945. The Charter makes a commitment to save humanity from “the scourge of war,” a promise it has kept in some instances and failed to keep in many others.  

The successes too cannot entirely be attributed to the United Nations — during the Cold War, the absence of an all-out confrontation can also be attributed to some caution on both sides and to the proliferation of regional proxy wars. But through all this failure, that countries have still sought to use the United Nations forum, to seek its legitimacy for their deeds and to gather through its platforms support coalitions for themselves, only underscores its continuing utility — however marginal that may seem in this sphere. 

Again, consider the alternative—just conflict, with no neutral place to talk and no functional platforms to learn to cooperate — is that better? 

A legitimate vehicle for collective action

Currently under fire for the steady stream of sexual abuse and exploitation reports, UN Peacekeepers are the most visible example of collective global action for peace. Their contribution in extremely difficult settings got them a Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Stationed with a variety of missions—from monitoring ceasefires and peace agreements to engaging with post-conflict nation-building—peacekeepers are drawn from several member-states and serve together under one command. Until recently, this was one of the most-lauded functions of the UN. 

In recent decades, the UN Security Council has also authorised military interventions—rightly or wrongly—in a variety of crisis situations. What is important to note is that those states that seek to intervene, now approach the Security Council for authorisation. This surely marks a change in state behaviour—although it does not happen in all cases as yet. There is a growing belief that intervention by a coalition of states is more legitimate than a single state’s unilateral military action. Furthermore, if that collective intervention receives Security Council approval, it is legitimate. 

This is a good thing. If otherwise powerful states are able to defer, even briefly, to another authority before taking action, at the very least, it offers a brief time in which peace efforts can be redoubled. 

Human security work by the UN

Most of us do not encounter the work of the Security Council on a daily basis. But we have directly or indirectly benefited from the work of the many agencies that fall under the purview of the UN Economic and Social Council. These include UNICEF, UNDP, UN Women and UNESCO and also the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Universal Postal Union (UPU), among many others. These functional agencies have forged the frameworks that enable us to work together, funded and monitored social development programmes that cover issues as varied as immunisation for children to the preservation of the world’s natural and cultural heritage. 

The work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the team of UN Special Rapporteurs and Working Groups who monitor and report on human rights violations around the world, as well as the work of UNHCR, offer everyday protection to those most beleaguered and threatened around the world. The documentation, highlighting, naming and shaming and advocacy around human rights would in itself justify the existence of the UN system. 

Although we associate and evaluate the UN by its work in the traditional peace and security issues, it is really in expanding our understanding of security that the UN system may have made its most important contribution. The 1994 UN Human Development Report introduced the idea of “human security” into our vocabulary which “equates security with people rather than territories, with development rather than arms.” The work of the UN agencies with real people in real crisis situations around the world has fed back into its thinking, in concert with transnational civil society and academics. We are now looking at lasting changes in our thinking on international relations that are built around what we have learned to value—human rights, gender and other equality issues and human security, which also include freedom from hunger and disease and freedom from fear. 

UN and global civil society

Through much of its history, the UN has worked with global civil society and maintained a symbiotic relationship with development, civil rights and women’s rights organisations around the world—even at the grassroots. This synergy is reflected in the evolution of its thinking, and it is also a source of strength to civil society. 

Although the United Nations is a body whose members are nation-states and which is funded and driven by governments and their representatives, it has offered several opportunities through which civil society organisations—often at odds with their governments—can also be heard on the international stage. The first is that CSOs can affiliate with ECOSOC and also with some of the UN agencies on issues that they espouse. NGO Forums are the second avenue—for instance, the annual NGO meetings around the Committee on the Status of Women. NGO conferences are a third. Finally, on the ground, UN offices reach out to and work with NGOs all the time.

Historically, civil society has reached out to the UN to create norms and standards that it lacks the clout to create in the home context. In most countries, it is easier to work with the UN to do that, and then to bring the global norm and promote it at home. This is a route that the women’s movement has tried with consistent success. The official CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women) report and the Shadow Report prepared by NGOs are both available on the official CEDAW site—this way, civil society is included in any discussion on the implementation of the convention. The dramatic advancement in global gender equality norms is largely due to this cooperative relationship between the United Nations and women’s organisations. The challenge for civil society organisations is to create acceptance and compliance for global norms in their respective home countries. 

In a global climate of shrinking civil rights and constraints upon civil society, the UN’s continuing consideration of their inputs will remain an important bulwark for the freedoms of association and expression and also offer an essential platform for our scattered and weak voices. 

Long ago, while in college, I read this comment on the League of Nations that has stayed with me long after I have forgotten its source and phrasing: When there was a conflict between two small powers, the conflict disappeared. When there was a conflict between a small power and a big power, the small power disappeared. When there was a conflict between two big powers, the League of Nations disappeared. 

The League’s history suggests that the most important reason to celebrate the United Nations, then, might just be this: After 70 years of the Cold War, Cold War proxy conflicts and innumerable internal conflicts, the UN is still standing. That constitutes an achievement by itself, as any septuagenarian will tell you. To be still standing while delivering important value to millions around the world each day, that’s definitely good reason for a party!

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training.