When the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly took place last September, there were several key world leaders missing in action (MIAs)—including, most importantly, leaders of the four of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the most powerful political body at the United Nations.
Only US President Joe Biden was there –while Emmanuel Macron of France, Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Rishi Sunak of UK skipped the UN sessions- either for personal or political reasons.
As an article in Le Monde pointed out: “Such notable absences reflect the crisis affecting UN bodies, against a backdrop of an international stage that is crumbling.”
A former diplomat Gérard Araud, a one-time French ambassador to the United Nations, said, “Multilateralism is seriously compromised in an increasingly multipolar world.”
“The absence of Security Council leaders is yet another symptom, but not the only one, of a powerless UN, caused by the war in Ukraine and the rivalry between the United States and China.”
Will history repeat itself this year when the high-level segment of the 79th session of the General Assembly begins mid-September?
With the UN remaining powerless in the context of a continuing Russian carnage in Ukraine and with over 40,000 mostly civilian killings in Gaza, is the world beginning to lose confidence in the United Nations as the world’s pre-eminent peace maker?
Asked for his comments, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters last month: “We very much hope that every Member State will be represented at the highest possible level, especially given not only what’s going on in the world today, but the fact that we have the Summit of the Future, (scheduled for September 22-23) which is critical to how this organization will function in the decades ahead.”
And these are issues that often come up in the Secretary-General’s bilateral meetings, he pointed out.
Andreas Bummel, co-founder and Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, told IPS the highest level of participation from Member States at the general debate of the United Nations each September sends a signal that the UN is valued as the world’s most important multilateral venue.
A presence this year at the Summit of the Future is crucial. “We hope that the summit will be an opportunity for world leaders to listen to ideas and proposals of civil society which has strongly engaged with the summit process.”
Among world leaders, he pointed out, are aggressors, autocrats, dictators and mass murderers. They are neither interested in strengthening the UN and even less in what civil society has to say. If they come, they should be confronted with their crimes, said Bummel.
Meanwhile, although Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made it to the UN, some of the world’s authoritarian leaders, including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea’s Kim il Sung and his grandson Kim Jong-un, never made it to the UN.
Dr Palitha Kohona, former Chief of the UN Treaty Section and one-time Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the Unted Nations told IPS: It is indeed a matter of serious concern that certain world leaders choose not to attend the Un General Assembly (UNGA).
It is understood that other matters may demand their attention at the same time, especially critical domestic issues. Some are facing elections or seeking to get reelected, he said.
“But at a time when the world, humanity itself– is confronted by a myriad of urgent challenges, many of them man-made or resulting from human actions, like the existential threat of climate change, the flood of over 160 million refugees, the indiscriminate slaughter that is happening in Gaza, the shaky progress with the SDGs, the worrying signs of an intensifying arms race, etc– the moral impact of the presence of world leaders, in particular the leaders of key powers, at the UNGA cannot be under estimated”.
The UNGA, he pointed out, is the only global forum that we have. Instead of contributing to the wishes of those who seek to denigrate this single world body that we have, and dilute its importance, which has many successes to justify its existence, we should exert ourselves to strengthen it.
This is certainly not the time to dismiss the value of the UN, declared Dr Kohona, who until recently was Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to China.
When global leaders meet at the UN, they will confront yet another year of complex crises and conflicts — as a deeply divided world watches, according to the UN Foundation.
“The UN is the only place on Earth where countries — whether big or small — have a say. The debates and conversations that will unfold during UNGA 79 will shape the solutions that can redefine our future”.
Progress hinges on leaders taking accountability and correcting course. But it also depends on people — especially young people — having a say in the decisions that will affect our future.
And the future depends on everyone’s participation — decision-makers and everyday citizens alike. It’s up to all of us to act now for people, for planet, and for our common future.
But one lingering question remains: how effective is the UN, where the 15-member Security Council, remains deadlocked reminiscent of the Cold War era?
When he addressed the UN Security Council via video-conferencing on April 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine did not pull his punches when he told delegates the purposes of the UN Charter, especially Article I — to maintain international peace and security — are being blatantly violated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“What is the point of all other Articles (in the UN charter)? Are you ready to close the United Nations? Do you think that the time for international law is gone?” If not, “you need to act immediately,” he told delegates.
To support peace in Ukraine, he argued, the Security Council must either remove the Russian Federation from the UN, both as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions made about its own war, or the Council can “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing it can do other than engage in conversation.
“Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, when the United Nations decided to locate its 39-storeyed Secretariat in New York city, the United States, as host nation, signed a “headquarters agreement” in 1947 not only ensuring diplomatic immunity to foreign diplomats but also pledging to facilitate the day-to-day activities of member states without any hindrance, including the issuance of US visas to enter the country.
But there were several instances of open violation of this agreement by successive US administrations.
The United States, which is legally obliged to respect international diplomatic norms as host country to the United Nations, has been accused of imposing unfair travel restrictions on U.N. diplomats in the country. Back in August 2000, the Russian Federation, Iraq and Cuba protested the “discriminatory” treatment, which they say targets countries that displease the U.S.
Pleading national security concerns, Washington has long placed tight restrictions on diplomats from several “unfriendly” nations, including those deemed “terrorist states,” particularly Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Libya. U.N. diplomats from these countries have to obtain permission from the U.S. State Department to travel outside a 25-mile radius from New York City.
When former Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused of war crimes, was refused a US visa to attend the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions in September 2013, Hassan Ali, a senior Sudanese diplomat, registered a strong protest with the UN’s Legal Committee.
“The democratically-elected president of Sudan had been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly because the host country, the United States, had denied him a visa, in violation of the U.N.-U.S. Headquarters Agreement. It was a great and deliberate violation of the Headquarters Agreement,” he said.
The refusal of a visa for the Sudanese president was also a political landmine because al-Bashir had been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But one question remained unanswered: Does the United States have a right to implicitly act on an ICC ruling when Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC?
When Yasser Arafat was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva– perhaps for the first time in UN history– providing a less-hostile political environment for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement by saying “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.
On his 1974 visit, he avoided the hundreds of pro and anti-Arafat demonstrators outside the UN building by arriving in a helicopter which landed on the North Lawn of the UN campus adjoining the East River.
When he addressed the General Assembly, there were confusing reports whether or not Arafat carried a gun in his holster—“in a house of peace” — which was apparently not visible to delegates.
One news story said Arafat was seen “wearing his gun belt and holster and reluctantly removing his pistol before mounting the rostrum.” “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand,” he told the Assembly. But there were some delegates who denied Arafat carried a weapon.
Setting the record straight, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information told IPS it was discreetly agreed that Arafat would keep the holster while the gun was to be handed over to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, later Foreign Minister and President of Algeria (1999-2019).
The speech, drafted in Arabic by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, stressed the spelling in formal Arabic of the “green branch” which the PLO Chairman still misspelled.
Incidentally, when anti-Arafat New York protesters on First Avenue shouted: “Arafat Go Home”, his supporters responded that was precisely what he wanted—a home for the Palestinians to go to.
But that dream has still not been realized—as thousands of Palestinians continue to be killed since last October by Israel, using largely American-supplied weapons.
This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment –and Don’t Quote Me on That” authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, and available on Amazon.
Inter Press Service.