UN: A Dead Organization Controlled by Powerful States

By Amina Čorbo-Zećo

Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza. He is not the only journalist killed. More than 230 journalists have been killed since October 7, 2023. It's not that the journalistic life is more important than all the thousands of others killed in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. But, their profession brings them to the headlines! Thousands of others end up only in numbers! The fate in Gaza is sad, and it seems even sadder in the world! As if the Planet doesn't see where it's going...

The United Nations was founded in 1945 as a global guarantor of peace, security, and international law. The UN Charter was supposed to be the holy scripture of diplomacy and the protection of the weaker from the stronger. Today, that same organization exists only as a decoration in diplomatic photographs, essentially dead, because powerful states have brutally rendered it meaningless.

The United States, the Russian Federation, China, the United Kingdom, and France, the five permanent members of the Security Council, have turned the UN into a private club for their interests. The veto they possess is not a tool for peace, but a mechanism for blocking justice when it threatens their military, economic, or geopolitical plans.

The US has repeatedly violated the UN Charter, from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to protecting Israeli military operations that violate international law.

Russia has openly occupied the territories of other states, including Ukraine, and paralyzed the Security Council with its veto.

China uses the UN as a cover for its economic and political interests, while blocking any resolution that would condemn its human rights violations.
The United Kingdom and France have participated in military interventions without a UN mandate, from Libya to Syria.

The principles of prohibiting aggression, respecting borders, and protecting civilians have become optional rhetoric. When their allies are involved, international law is "flexibly interpreted"; when opponents are involved, there is a call for strict adherence to the same norms.

Instead of preventing wars and genocide, the UN has turned into a bureaucratic apparatus that reacts only after massacres are completed, and perpetrators are secured by the political protection of their sponsors. Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar, the list is long, and the pattern is the same. And that tells us that the journalist from the beginning of the story, Anas Al Sharif, is not the first, and unfortunately, not the last!

The United Nations is no longer united, nor is it for the people. The name of this organization is a relic of the last century and a symbol of hypocrisy. If the international community wants to save itself from complete anarchy, it is necessary to create a new system, without the privileges of certain states, without the right of veto, and without the possibility of political interests stifling justice.

Everything else is just the prolonged death of the UN.