A call for UN reform

The 72nd UN General Assembly convened today in New York in the US. At the meeting, the leaders of UN member states will address the General Assembly on global problems. The purpose of the General Assembly, which meets once a year, is in fact for a mechanism of continuous consultation to convene once a year at the highest level of officialdom so that what happened before the Second World War does not happen again. In other words, the aim is for global peace and security to be sustainable and for the UN's contribution to this sustainability to be made effective.

However, when international disputes and conflicts on a global scale are examined, it is hard to say that the UN, in both its past and its present, has come close to this intention. The UN's response to the tragedy in Syria, which we in Türkiye have experienced very closely and painfully and where every kind of inhuman act, including chemical weapons and mass killings, has taken place, was a gigantic nothing. It is also hard to put together sentences that could excuse the UN's inaction regarding the conflicts taking place in Africa.

Our President, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who stresses that this organization was born of the need for global peace and argues that it must be subjected to a reform process in line with this purpose, has an expression, "The World Is Bigger Than Five", which has virtually become a slogan of hope in oppressed geographies, and which pointed to a need arising from the UN's ineffectiveness.

A signal of this need at the highest level also came this year, before the General Assembly, from US President Trump. Before the General Assembly, the US leader spoke at a meeting titled "UN Reform" organized by his country at the UN, and said that the UN has been unable to realize its potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement. The tragic side of the matter was that Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General and the public face of the UN, also stated that he agreed with Trump's views.

Reform at the UN has been a matter voiced for many years. Kofi Annan, one of the UN's former secretaries-general, also stressed this need in the 1990s and prepared a reform plan for the UN. The plan, which proposed changes to the UN's decision-making mechanisms that made one say "not enough, but yes", could not be put into practice because it did not suit US interests at the time. In the time since, demands for change have constantly come onto the agenda, but no result has been obtained.

At this point, hearing the US President speak of a reform at the UN does evoke astonishment mingled with curiosity. For it was the US administration that had left the previous reform proposal null and void. However, when you read Trump's reform proposal and the Good Faith Document opened for signature by the US, you can easily understand that no genuine reform is being proposed for the UN, and that an attempt is being made to give the impression that a big job is being done with insignificant details.

According to Trump, the most important reason for the UN's ineffectiveness is the dense bureaucracy at the UN. The reason for that, in turn, is that although the number of UN employees has increased by 140% since 2000, its effectiveness has not increased. The real problem of the UN seems to be, according to the US, that while costs at the UN have risen, the volume of work has not. However, it appears that the US does not consider issues such as the presence of five permanent member countries in the UN Security Council, the UN's executive organ, and these countries' having the right of the double veto, the status of the Security Council's temporary members and their effectiveness in decision-making mechanisms, and the distribution of Security Council members by geography to reduce the UN's effectiveness.

That being so, we are expected to believe that what has prevented the UN from ending the humanitarian tragedy in Syria is not the five permanent members of the UN Security Council but the salaried officials at the UN who impose an extra burden on the US treasury!

The UN needs a root-and-branch reform. If this need can be seen and met today, bigger explosions will also be prevented. Otherwise, there should be no doubt that the UN, too, will suffer the sad and instructive end of the League of Nations, and that the destruction will be far greater. Trump's reform proposal is important only because it contains the word reform; the rest is empty talk. A reform package not filled with the changes the UN needs will not even save the day, considering what has happened in Syria and Arakan.