Paul Hosford: How will UN answer questions of its ability to solve the world's crises?
Annalena Baerbock, the president of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), addresses the 80th session of the UN General Assembly at United Nations headquarters. Picture: Angelina Katsanis/PA
What is the point of institutions such as the UN?
Questions like this have long been posed, but as the world watches a streamed genocide in Gaza, a nuclear superpower attempting to annex its neighbour in Ukraine, and conflicts in Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and more, the question of whether these institutions are fit for purpose has never seemed so urgent.
Here in New York, as world leaders assemble for High Level Week, it is a question worth posing. The UN's agencies such as Unicef, UNRWA, and the WHO are generally — though not universally — considered to be forces for good, but the utility of its general assembly beyond being a talking shop is a question frequently posed by the public.
Nowhere this week is this question more obvious than the loftily titled High Level Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution at the United Nations, convened by France and Saudi Arabia.
While France used the occasion to pat itself on the back for joining 78% of the world's nations in recognising a Palestinian state along with others, the Palestinian Authority — leaders of half of the states in the aforementioned solution — were sat at home because America had revoked Mahmoud Abbas's visa and would not return it. This is despite a motion co-sponsored by Ireland last week, which passed by a vote of 145-5 with six abstentions.
In a way, the situation sums up what many feel is the failing of the modern-day UN: A well-meaning and decent group of people who are unable to do the most meaningful of their work because the traditional powers just simply don't want to.
When US president Donald Trump comes to town on Tuesday morning, security will ramp up and the presidential motorcade will frustrate New Yorkers looking to simply get around their city.
Away from the chagrin of commuters, there is the question of just what Trump is likely to say. His administration and entire political outlook has largely been shaped by a disdain for the multilateralism which shaped the 90s and early 00s, and he has taken a dim view of the organisations which have embodied the same.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris arrived in New York on Sunday ahead of a week of meetings and engagements that will aim to underscore the importance of that international framework, particularly on Gaza and Ukraine.
Perhaps the clearest, most clarion argument for the notion of countries working together came high above the UN as former president Mary Robinson spoke to the media.
Robinson is a member of a group of former leaders called The Elders, which will release a policy paper this week that argues that the world must find its way back to a position where co-operation, and not isolation, is pursued.
Robinson underlined the challenges facing the world, challenges that could only be met together — not by defending the status quo, but by working to strengthen institutions like the UN.
"We need to understand that we absolutely need the multilateral approach, because we have these existential threats ... the existential threat of the climate and nature crisis, the nuclear weapons crisis, which is really serious, because the response to the aggressive war by Russia on Ukraine is for everybody to militarise, make them faster, make them more potent."
