The world this weekend

Where’s the world this weekend, as we enter spring in the South and autumn in the North? Well, I can tell you where many a world leader is. Down by the East River in New York, Turtle Bay is the neighbourhood, midtown Manhattan as it’s known to New Yorkers, otherwise the home of the organisation that has tried for 70-odd years to keep peace and security across our world. 

Must be important, right? Yes, it is – on paper at least. Because I’m talking about the United Nations, based there since 1952 in a building that so surely represents a monument to the hope of the planet back then, for ‘Peace’ with a capital ‘P’ coming out of World War, looking for a better tomorrow.

This year, at the behest of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres (a former prime minister of Portugal and a politician well versed in the art of selling ideas, if not solutions), those leaders will discuss everything from poverty, to climate change, to sustainable development, to terrorism and, of course, to war, given what we’re seeing right now in old Europe, the cradle of the modern UN, and the Middle East, the crucible of its existence since its birth.

The agenda, as so often at the United Nations, is lengthy, and could use an editor’s pen, but that is not the UN way. Why table a few action points when many will do? So, this weekend the UN is holding a so-called ‘Summit of the Future,’ and on the table are 60 action points. Yes, 60. The big picture, as defined by Guterres, is encapsulated in his thought: “We can’t build a future for our grandchildren with a system for our grandparents.” It’s a terrific headline-cum-challenge, given the way the UN has ossified by being a structure from 1945 (think those grandparents), so palpably not in sync with 2025 (consider those grandkids).

Let’s examine the key tenets of the summit’s goals. Firstly, to reaffirm the UN Charter, a document written 80 years ago, which is obviously not a blueprint for those grandchildren. Then to reinvigorate multilateralism, a dream goal coming out of World War II, but under such threat as we watch one major power invade a neighbour next door (think Russia), or another superpower supply an ally with weapons to kill tens of thousands living in the same small land (think the United States). 

Next comes the idea of “boosting implementation of existing commitments” – a hard sell when you consider how the world keeps going to UN meetings on the climate crisis, agreeing to do X, Y and Z, then not doing what they promised. Finally, we see the imperative “to agree on solutions to new challenges.” Time to applaud that ambition, surely, given the huge changes new technologies are bringing to all, wherever we live, and the need to share those hi-tech avenues to changing people’s lives.

But here’s the thing. Any action plans will hinge on the big players at the UN agreeing to make any consensus from a weekend like this work. And who are those players? Why, the United States, China, and Russia – the three powerhouses coming out of World War II, so very much in place 80 years on. And will they allow the UN system to implement solutions to new challenges if they don’t suit them, especially as they wield a veto in that ultimate chamber of power at the UN, the Security Council ? Think again, Senhor Guterres.

Let’s take action point 24: “A future free from terrorism.” And let’s start at the top of the UN hierarchy. The head of the UN’s counter-terrorism task force is a Russian and is a representative of the state that is accused of perpetrating terrorist acts on a weekly, nay daily, basis right now. Then we have the United States, which is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza while supplying weapons to an Israel that destroy the lives of others, the Palestinians. And it almost goes without saying that China won’t allow the discussion of findings from UN bodies probing crimes against humanity in China.

Full disclosure: after decades as a foreign correspondent across our world, I accepted an offer from previous UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, to work as an adviser to him. In the decade I spent with the multilateral institution, some of those years in Argentina, I came to appreciate and defend the extraordinary work the UN does almost unseen, day in day out. Think about feeding more than 100 million people every day – from Haiti, to Gaza, to Congo. Think about inoculating half the kids on the planet, as the organisation does, just witness the remarkable job done to pre-empt polio in Gaza with a vaccination programme that was heroic. Then consider age-old wars, where the UN keeps some kind of peace, I’ve seen that, in Lebanon, in Liberia, in Congo, in India and Pakistan.

But politically, the organisation faces a crossroads of relevance. Can the UN be a forum for peace and security when, so palpably, its lead powers use that building on the East River and its microphone to say one thing, only to then do another or simply veto whatever they don’t like? The day that Russia went to war in Ukraine, in 2022, it occupied the chair of the UN Security Council, so vetoing any condemnation of what Vladimir Putin had just done… well that’s a day of infamy writ large, right?

Some of my erstwhile colleagues at the UN are brutally honest about this weekend’s prospects. I saw one write recently: “If there was ever a good definition of ‘brain dead,’ we are encountering it in the UN.” I still cherish the hope that we can recognise that, 80 years on, the United Nations needs to be re-equipped as the world’s number one first responder to any humanitarian crisis and stripped of the notion that such an imperfect body, so out of step with the time, can ever keep the peace without the wherewithal to do so.