Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
Inside Geneva
Is the UN still relevant at 80?
The United Nations General Assembly has officially opened and the organisation marked its 80th anniversary. Inside Geneva asks whether the body remains relevant.
“If you're a refugee in Bangladesh, or seeking protection in South Sudan, the UN may be imperfect but it’s still relevant,” says Richard Gowan from the International Crisis Group.
The UN is bigger than many of us think.
“We do sometimes forget that the UN still has 60,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world and that it continues to run vast humanitarian operations. So the UN isn’t dead, but I think it’s drifting,” he says.
But what about the UN’s original role – resolving conflicts and promoting peace?
“US President Donald Trump said he wants the UN to refocus on peace and security. But in reality, the US, along with other major powers, hasn’t been working through the UN to address any of today’s major crises.”
Are world leaders making a mistake by leaving the UN out?
“What UN mediators and other conflict resolution specialists have learnt over the past few decades is that peace is a slow business,” Gowan says.
“Trump likes to present himself as a master dealmaker, but what he’s talking about isn’t constructing lasting peace. It’s about grabbing headlines on a few occasions.”
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Fowkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 3:In today's programme, it is now my duty, my honour and my privilege in the chair to call for a vote on the approval of the charter of the united nations we do sometimes forget that the un still has 60 000 peacekeepers around the world.
Speaker 4:It's still running enormous humanitarian operations. So the UN is not dead, but I think the UN is drifting.
Speaker 5:The UN has tremendous potential. It's not living up to that potential right now. It really isn't. Hasn't for a long time.
Speaker 4:Donald Trump actually says that he wants the UN to focus back on peace and security. We prioritize global peacemaking, but the reality is that the US and other and other powers are not working through the UN on any of the big crises of the day.
Speaker 6:Has Israel turned Gaza into a starvation camp? The UN says the Strip is the hungriest place on Earth. As Israel continues its blockade and bombardment, every single person is at risk of famine.
Speaker 4:Something that we are seeing is actually Israel, as a matter of policy, trying to deconstruct the UN presence in the conflict, and that is something which could set a very, very disturbing precedent in many other places.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Folks. Now, this October, the United Nations will be 80 years old. The UN was founded amid great hope and determination, even to create a better, fairer, more peaceful and more equal world. But eight decades later, many say the body struggles for relevance. The big powers on the Security Council the United States, russia, China, the UK and France agree on very little these days except, it seems, on a shared desire to hang on to their individual vetoes, which they can and do use to obstruct UN policy. The UN's traditional conflict resolution role seems to have been sidelined, certainly in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the UN's humanitarian agencies are facing existential financial cuts. So, 80 years on, and as government leaders head to New York for the UN General Assembly, how is the UN doing? On Inside Geneva? Today we bring you an in-depth conversation with Richard Gowan, director UN and Multilateral Diplomacy at the International Crisis Group. My first question to him is the UN still relevant?
Speaker 4:I think that if you are a refugee in Bangladesh or if you are looking for protection in South Sudan, the UN is imperfect, but it is relevant and there's a lot of talk at a very geopolitical level about the decline of international cooperation, about the fact we're in a very fragmented world, but we do sometimes forget that the UN still has 60,000 peacekeepers around the world. It's still running enormous humanitarian operations, enormous humanitarian operations. So the UN is not dead, but I think the UN is drifting and I think there is, especially against the backdrop of the Trump administration and the US distancing itself from the organisation, a very real sense of malaise in New York and Geneva and very real doubts about where this organisation is headed as it enters its next decade.
Speaker 2:Where do you think it's headed? Then? You know you've written about the UN's waning role, for example, in conflict resolution. Now we see that writ large right now the UN is nowhere in the discussions about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, nowhere over the conflict in the Middle East. Now, 20 years ago, I think both you and I would have even 10 years ago, would have expected the UN to be central to these kinds of discussions.
Speaker 4:Well, I think we have to remember that over its 80 years, the UN has waxed and waned.
Speaker 4:There were long periods in the Cold War where the UN really was totally marginal to a lot of conflicts.
Speaker 4:I think in 1959, the Security Council didn't meet at all for three or four months, and so you know, yes, the UN is struggling at the moment, but it's not as paralysed as it has sometimes been.
Speaker 4:I think our challenge is that our point of reference is the 1990s and, to some extent, the first decade of this century, because in the post-Cold War moment there was a boom in UN activity and the UN was central to dealing with a lot of crises. Now, let's remember that the UN messed up horribly in the Balkans, in Rwanda. The UN struggled then too, but I think there was a feeling for at least the first decade or two decades after the Cold War that the organization did have a special place as somewhere where all the big powers could come together, an organization that could launch very large scale peace operations, that was an impartial mediator. That has been ebbing away, I would say, since the Arab revolutions in 2011. And since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in particular, we have seen cooperation between the big powers decline, the Security Council has become less efficient as a result, and UN mediators and UN peacekeepers just don't have the top-level political cover that they once did.
Speaker 3:President Trump is set to arrive in New York City ahead of his visit to the United Nations.
Speaker 5:There are great hopes for it, but it's not being well run, to be honest, and they're not doing the job. A lot of these conflicts that we're working on should be settled, or at least we should have some help in settling them. We never seem to get help.
Speaker 4:Now Donald Trump actually says that he wants the UN to focus back on peace and security. He says that the organization should reprioritize global peacemaking, but the reality is that the US and other powers are not working through the UN on any of the big crises of the day, which leaves the UN with the crumbs, the second order crises where no one else really wants to get their hands dirty. And even in those places, the organisation is sort of struggling to stay as relevant as it once was.
Speaker 2:Let's unpick that for a minute though, because you mentioned Donald Trump, and obviously he is this towering figure over international affairs at the moment. But you know he talks about having solved six wars since he came into office.
Speaker 5:I've solved six wars in the last six months a little more than six months now and I'm very proud of it.
Speaker 7:I put out fires all over the world. We did one yesterday, as you know, we stopped a war. We stopped about five wars, so that's much more important than playing golf.
Speaker 2:I mean, some of us might ask ourselves if Donald Trump really even understands what all of this is about, because Democratic Republic of Congo is one that he said that he solved, which I have a statement from Amnesty International in front of me right now talking about renewed appalling violence. So is it dangerous to say, oh, everything's moved away from the UN and other people are taking it over, when some of these people might not even understand what they're actually doing?
Speaker 4:I think that's right. I think that the Trump school of peacemaking is very much based on getting a quick win and you know you can get a quick win by bombing Iran or holding but this is not peacemaking, it's not peace, it's not sustainable. It's not, and I think you know what UN mediators and Other conflict resolution specialists have learned over the last decades is that peace is a very slow business.
Speaker 2:Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in talks tonight to try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Donald Trump applauded Vladimir Putin's arrival in Alaska. The red carpet here is both literal and metaphorical.
Speaker 4:You can always get a summit. You can always, if you're the US, use military force to get a spectacular effect, but actually constructing sustainable peace requires slow diplomacy, slow work on the ground and there are lots and lots of setbacks are lots and lots of setbacks Now. President Trump is a man who likes to present himself as a master dealmaker and I do think he genuinely believes that he deserves the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, but what he's talking about is not constructing lasting peace. It's about having grabbed the headlines in a couple of occasions. Now we should be glad in some cases that the US is engaging on peace. I think that actually, the US engagement in the Congo overall is a net positive. It has moved some political discussions and some regional discussions that were going very badly in a marginally more positive direction, but it's far too early to say it's worked.
Speaker 2:And people who've watched that region for many, many years are very sceptical about whether it will work. Let's be honest about that.
Speaker 7:On Saturday, my administration helped broker a full and immediate ceasefire I think a permanent one between India and Pakistan, ending a dangerous conflict of two nations with lots of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4:And there are other cases, by the way, where Trump claims he's made peace, such as between India and Pakistan, where a lot of the other players involved are pretty sceptical about how significant the US role was. Indian officials in particular say that the US was helpful during this year's clash with Pakistan, but it wasn't decisive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the two big ones we're looking at. Well, for everybody who's in a conflict, that conflict is the big one, but let's say the ones that the global spotlight is on are the Middle East, gaza and Russia, ukraine. Here some people might say that the UN input might be a useful injection of reality to the kind of discussions that are going on.
Speaker 4:They're two very different situations from the UN perspective. On Ukraine, the UN has always been relatively marginal, going right back to 2014,. European powers like France and Germany have always wanted to keep the UN out of diplomacy with Moscow, and since the beginning of the all-out war in 2022, since the beginning of the all-out war in 2022, antonia Guterres has had one really noteworthy success, which was helping to mediate the Black Sea Grain Initiative. But for most of the war he has been holding back and I think he's had messages from both Moscow and Kiev that his good officers are not really welcome in this situation. So the UN has a humanitarian role, but it's on the margins. In the case of Gaza and the wider Middle East conflict, there's something different going on, which is that the UN has been centrally involved in Middle East peacemaking, going right back into the Cold War. But Israel, I think, has concluded that the UN is fundamentally biased against it and it actually wants to dismantle the architecture of UN peacekeeping and UN aid in the Palestinian territories and on its borders.
Speaker 6:People in Gaza are hungry and desperate.
Speaker 8:Behind these walls we have two million people. That has no water, no food, no medicine. So these trucks are not just trucks. They are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza, and to see them stuck here makes me be very clear. What we need is to make them move.
Speaker 1:There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza. We enable humanitarian aid, throughout the duration of the war, to enter Gaza, otherwise there would be no Gazans. Hamas robs, steals this humanitarian aid.
Speaker 4:So we've seen Israel declaring the Secretary General persona non grata, trying to undermine UN aid operations in Gaza, and the West Bank pushing for the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to wind down. I mean, something that we are seeing is actually Israel, as a matter of policy, trying to deconstruct the UN presence in the conflict, and that is something which could set a very, very disturbing precedent in many other places, because if the UN does crumble after nearly 80 years of involvement in the Middle East, does crumble after nearly 80 years of involvement in the Middle East, then it can crumble anywhere.
Speaker 2:That goes, I think, to the heart of what our conversation today is about, because this is a precedent that has occurred to me and many of my colleagues in Geneva too that we are seeing a direct reputational attack on what many of us consider to be reputable UN humanitarian organisations and indeed the International Committee of the Red Cross not UN, but also present and the sense that these bodies are absolutely not desired in exactly the place that they are most needed, which is Gaza. We talked about the sidelining of the UN in peacekeeping, but we are now seeing also this key role of the UN, the humanitarian side, also being sidelined. And it's always the way with these things, isn't it, that if one member state can do it, others will follow when it suits them.
Speaker 4:I think that's absolutely true and obviously Gaza dominates the headlines, but if you look around the world, you can see very serious cases such as the civil war in Sudan, where again you have conflict parties who are either blocking the UN from assisting very large numbers of civilians or at least place incredibly heavy conditions on the UN's work.
Speaker 8:Now, this is not unprecedented.
Speaker 4:The UN has always faced political pushback in situations like Bosnia in the 1990s, situations like Bosnia in the 1990s. But I do think that we're entering a moment where a lot of states and a lot of other armed groups. They look at the UN, they see the Security Council is divided. They look at precedents like Gaza and they can tell that you can you know you can beat up the UN and there's no penalty. You may face a lot of statements of concern, you may even face some votes in the General Assembly, but actually you know what Israel is demonstrating is that there's very little real world price for rejecting the UN and I do worry that that lesson is going to be learned and transmitted to other conflicts.
Speaker 6:Food distribution by GHF, the Israeli-US-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. In that first month, Israel's Haaretz newspaper documents 19 instances of the Israeli army opening fire near these food handouts.
Speaker 2:We stand in line for hours to get a handful of rice or a loaf of bread, we cannot approach the USAID distribution post. The Israeli drones open fire and drop bombs on us. The other thing where for me anyway, observing it very much from the humanitarian headquarters of the UN in Geneva, any way, observing it very much from the humanitarian headquarters of the UN in Geneva is that what's happened in Gaza takes things in some ways a bit of a step further than Sudan or even Syria 10 years ago, where there was lots of blocking of aid and so on. Because here we have the United States, a member of the Security Council, with Israel setting up a rival humanitarian organisation and providing it with the logistics and the permission to work. That's the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Disastrous consequences in terms of the deaths, and yet it continues.
Speaker 4:I mean, you would hope that other global players will look at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, see what a disaster it has been and take away the lesson that actually sometimes the UN, for all its flaws, is actually the best placed actor to provide humanitarian aid to civilian populations. I mean, I think that the Gaza story has demonstrated precisely that non-UN actors are just not able to replicate the sort of aid provision that the big UN agencies can provide. It's interesting. There's a curious parallel in the peacekeeping world in Haiti right now.
Speaker 1:Haiti.
Speaker 2:One of the most dangerous places on earth. We're joining the Kenyan police in their fight against the gangs terrorizing the country.
Speaker 6:The multinational force, which is headed by Kenya, arrived in Haiti last June.
Speaker 4:A Kenyan policeman was killed in the incident. Last year, a group of Kenyan police deployed to try and support the Haitian government restore order, but they haven't had the logistical backup and financial backup that they would have if they were a UN Blue Helmet mission and they've been really, really struggling and a lot of diplomats look at that and say, hmm, actually, maybe UN peacekeeping does have some strengths. So you can look at these ad hoc, one-off operations and I think you often find that they don't outperform the UN. The problem, of course, is that the UN requires both Security Council, political backup to engage, but it also needs money, and the other challenge that the humanitarians in particular face is that the US is just slashing funding from under all the big agencies. I don't think that there's a scenario where that funding comes back, at least in Trump's term.
Speaker 8:The United Nations says, his situation and that of millions of other displaced people in the Sahel and West Africa is only going to get worse. Warehouses are running out of supplies because donors are cutting funding.
Speaker 3:Late today, the US State Department suspended all foreign assistance around the world for at least three months.
Speaker 4:And so the UN's ability to provide the level of aid that it has been doing in recent years is contracting anyway.
Speaker 2:So where do we go from here? Then? We started this conversation with the fact that the UN is 80. Very good reasons why it was created. Some of those reasons, in terms of conflict and people being brutal to each other and an unequal world have not gone away. So optimistic view member states might notice that yeah, actually what we invented 80 years ago, it has got some benefits. Doing without it in Gaza or Haiti didn't work so well. Pessimistic view We've set precedents where people are thinking this organisation gets in our way politically, strategically. We believe in nationalism, not multilateralism.
Speaker 4:I mean, I actually think that on the one hand, the bulk of UN member states, especially small and middle sized powers, do want the organization to keep going. You know, we focus on the worst cases, we focus on countries that are rejecting the UN. We overlook the fact that the rank and file of states around the world actually quite like the multilateral system that we have. But I think the counter to that is something that has really struck me since January, which is, in a moment of great turbulence and a moment where people are seeing the wider world order shifting, the UN is not their top priority. So I think policymakers in almost every capital in the world are primarily worried about trade relations with the US, and policymakers in US allies are desperately concerned about security relations with the US, and so that's what they're focusing on. You know what Washington is doing to the Human Rights Council or the World Food Programme doesn't make the top.
Speaker 2:Not outside Geneva.
Speaker 4:no, the top 50 priorities in most national capitals and I think diplomats in Geneva and New York. They're left sort of on the one hand saying we want the multilateral system to continue, but on the other hand they're really struggling to get the attention of their masters back home about all the problems that are that are building up Now. I think at some point the you know the really dire financial situation will come home. I think at some point we're going to have to have much more serious discussions than we've had so far about not just the financing of the UN but also the structure of the UN. We're going to have to talk about whether we should be merging some large UN agencies to make them really more efficient, and governments will have to engage on that. But I have a suspicion that it's still going to be a couple of years until those sorts of big systemic discussions really come into focus. It may be associated with the arrival of a new secretary general in 2027, because just right now the political energy and the political focus is elsewhere.
Speaker 2:So, but just coming up to the General Assembly then, and it's Antonio Guterres is still secretary general for another couple of years. What can he do right now, at this coming up General Assembly, to remind member states, including the big dinosaurs of the Security Council, that this is a body. They should be investing some time and attention?
Speaker 4:So Katerish tends to work at two levels.
Speaker 4:There's a rhetorical level, and he does give grand sweeping statements about, you know, the need to preserve world order and the risks of not doing so. But there's also a more practical level, which is his focus right now, which is simply balancing the books. And since January, guterres has been very, very heavily focused on cutting costs, you know, reducing the UN staff, you know, essentially muddling through to ensure that especially the UN Secretariat doesn't implode financially. And with 15 months left of his term, my sense is that Guterres is increasingly resigned to the fact that that has to be his focus. The cost savings and the cost efficiencies are ultimately where he has to concentrate, because if he doesn't, then the entire system may seize up.
Speaker 4:So I'm sure he will give a very broad, sweeping defence of the UN system when he speaks to world leaders, but he will then likely pivot from that to a discussion of UN structures, mandates and management. That I doubt will feel super inspiring, but that's what he's lumped with. That's what he's lumped with. That's what he's got to do. The other problem for Guterres is that the speaker after him is President Lula from Brazil, but then this guy, donald, up from Washington, will take to the podium.
Speaker 2:Is he definitely coming? Do you think?
Speaker 4:We haven't had it fully confirmed, but you know Trump, he loves the attention. He's always enjoyed the UN General Assembly, so I suspect he'll be there and from the moment he opens his mouth, whatever Guterres said just evaporates, because people are really going to be there to see Trump. Leaders will want bilats with Trump and, once again, you know even prime ministers who've been sitting there thinking like, yeah, well, we should probably prop up. The UN will refocus 100 percent and be asking well, what is Trump going to tell us?
Speaker 2:You talked about Antonio Guterres being lumped with this, having to save money, and this is how, perhaps, his reign at the UN will be defined. Perhaps his reign at the UN will be defined.
Speaker 4:Do you have some sympathy for him as a man who really wanted to make a multilateral tackling of climate change the signature of his time as Secretary General. I have a lot of sympathy for Guterres. Now I think that actually isn't widely shared amongst a lot of UN colleagues at the moment is widely shared amongst a lot of UN colleagues. At the moment there's a lot of ill feeling around the system towards him because he is having to cut the budget and because he is having to cut jobs. But I think if you zoom out, you know you have to say that whatever his strengths and whatever his weaknesses, the Secretary General has been a profoundly unlucky man. His weaknesses the Secretary General has been a profoundly unlucky man.
Speaker 4:He had to spend his first term grappling with Trump 1. He had to spend most of his second term grappling with Russia's aggression against Ukraine and then the Israel-Hamas war, which has at times felt like an existential crisis for the organisation. And then he gets to spend his lame duck period dealing with Trump too. And he is a man of great intellect and he has ego, but he has ambition and I think he wanted to spend his time, especially these last few years, in office, rebooting the climate change battle and also getting the UN to focus on issues like regulating artificial intelligence, and instead he's having to spend his twilight in office trying to get the staff to shave off 20% of posts. It's a bit of a tragic story really. It's a reminder that, however experienced and however smart a politician may be, events will always shape their time in office, and I think that has very much been the case for Guterres.
Speaker 3:After days and nights of compromise and cooperation, four main agencies upon which the world now puts its hope A powerful security council having final military authority, a General Assembly representing all member nations, a social and economic council to tackle the causes of war and an international court to judge any international disputes.
Speaker 2:And that final reminder of the hopes invested in the United Nations in 1945 brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Richard Gowan for his insights into the UN at 80. Next on Inside Geneva, we'll be bringing you our very last summer profile of the year, where we talk to a young physiotherapist from Ireland who now works for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza. That's out September 30th, don't miss it. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.
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