As the UN Turns 80, Its Mission Is as Contradictory as Ever
By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assumed the podium to speak before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) during High-level Week last month, dozens of delegates and staffers from scores of countries participated in a staged walkout. These include those that didn’t bother to show up at all. A total of 77 countries were absent during the address, according to Israeli officials. Joined by the odd few European countries, the list of those not present consists largely of non-Western governments, among whom are some of the world’s biggest human rights abusers.
Just a few days earlier, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the UNGA. While thousands gathered to demonstrate against the regime outside the UN headquarters, there was no mass walkout inside the building. Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Premier Li Qiang also spoke, as did North Korean Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Kim Son Gyong, marking the first time since 2018 that the totalitarian regime has sent a senior diplomat to High-level Week. There were, again, no mass walkouts.
This, of course, exposes the conglomerate of governments, Muslim and non-Muslim, with uniquely anti-Israel sentiments. But more than that, it reveals a deep corruption within the UN itself.
In the most populous city of the greatest Western nation, enemies of the West were permitted to mock it, as well as its sacred ideal that international cooperation is possible. Pezeshkian spoke of Israeli and American airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites as “a grave betrayal of diplomacy and a subversion of efforts toward the establishment of stability and peace.” Li used phrases like “the greater good of humanity” and bringing “more positive energy into the world,” when referring to China, contrasting it with American “hegemonism and bullying” (albeit without mentioning the United States by name). Lavrov warned that Western involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war would constitute “an egregious violation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Kim justified North Korean nuclear weapons as a matter of a “balance of power” with South Korea and referred to U.S.-led military exercises with its East Asian allies as a “growing threat of aggression.”
Of course, none of these regimes care about the international norms for which they express so much apparent concern. Iran flagrantly funds terror, yet at the UN speaks of “stability and peace.” Russia has no regard for Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty, as it warns of violations against its own. These regimes spoonfeed the world carefully wrought phrases and buzzwords, whilst behaving in ways wholly opposed to those ideals. It is an insult to the intelligence of the civilized world.
And yet it is one they know they can get away with.
80 years ago, the UN was founded on the premise of sovereign equality, that every state is equal in both its rights and its obligations in the international system. In theory, this would mean that Russia, despite its size and power, should not get a free pass to invade other nations. Human rights abusers should face unbiased scrutiny.
The problem is that the very mechanism by which these norms are enforced, the UN’s governing bodies, requires that all states buy into this premise. For the UN to be effective, all states must view the UN as a vehicle to achieve world peace and universal human rights. The UN implicitly assumes this consensus among its member states, who have adopted the UN Charter. But in reality, no such consensus exists. Not all states think this way. Nevertheless, they are given a seat at the table.
This renders the UN’s mission essentially self-defeating. States are given equal opportunity to participate in the General Assembly, to sit on the Security Council as non-permanent members and to be involved in various UN bodies and organs, such as the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). All states are seen as equally capable of advancing the goals of these institutions, even if they have demonstrated that they are opposed to them. As a result, no progress can actually been made. Instead, these regimes can shape the UN in their own image.
That image is an explicitly anti-Western one. As Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN watchdog UN Watch, put it, High-level Week is “a catwalk for dictators.” The same can be said of much of the UN’s regular proceedings. The UN has been captured by collections of governments that, despite the language they use before the General Assembly, are working against the very ideals the UN was founded on. This is why, since 2015, the UNGA has condemned Israel 173 times, according to UN Watch data. That is three times the amount of condemnations against Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia combined. Other human rights abusers, like China, Cuba and Venezuela, have not been condemned even once in the last decade. In the Security Council, the only body whose decisions come with any enforcement power, two of the biggest threats to global security, Russia and China, have veto power as permanent members. As such, it is virtually impossible to advance goals of worldwide stability and peace.
Turning to bodies like the UNHRC and CSW, an even grimmer picture emerges. States currently sitting on the UNHRC, supposedly focused on “the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe,” include communist regimes like China and Cuba, along with states like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), both in the midst of bloody civil wars and with abysmal human rights situations. 56% of countries currently sitting on the council are non-demoracies.
Included among the 44 states set to serve on the CSW at next year’s session are some ranked among the worst in the world in regard to women’s equality. These include the DRC, Pakistan, Mali and others that have consistently appeared near the bottom of gender equality indexes. In March 2025, the CSW was chaired by Saudi Arabia, also set to sit on the 2026 commission. The country has only allowed women to drive since 2018 and has a male guardianship system enshrined in law.
Viewing the world’s most oppressive regimes as equal contributors to the advancement of global security and human rights, on par with the world’s most liberal governments, is deeply perverted. It is reflective of a belief that by treating all nations’ governments and cultures as sharing the democratic and humanitarian ideals enshrined by the UN, they will all become so. But this delusion doesn’t create a reality in which all nations are indeed equally free and prosperous. Instead, when unable to create genuine progress, the UN sacrifices the world’s vulnerable on an altar of cultural and governmental relativism. It prioritizes oppressive governments over those being oppressed under them.
Not all forms of government nor all cultures are created equal. If the UN cannot admit this, if it cannot enforce standards, nothing will change. No problems, whether they be in regard to human rights or global security, will be solved. Instead, they risk getting worse, as dictators get a free pass and liberal democracies are either condemned or impotent to promote change. For this, the UN will have only itself to blame.
Photo Caption: UN General Assembly
Photo Credit: Paul Lowry, Flickr