The UN must get back in the ring and fight Mark Malloch-Brown

A recent Reuters headline noted: “UN report finds United Nations reports are not widely read”.

- Mark Malloch-Brown

That may be the least of the UN’s troubles. Not read, but, more significantly, not respected any more. In too many major capitals, most notably Washington, its very relevance is in doubt.

The latest malaise may have begun with Vladimir Putin's Russia betraying the most basic tenet of the UN charter, a respect for aneighbour’s borders, with its invasion of Ukraine — but Donald Trump's America has piled on.

Doubling down on condoning war crimes in Gaza; threatening the independence of its northern neighbours, Canada and Greenland; and more generally turning the post second world war order on its head with tariff wars, a rejection of international security commitments, and a disregard for the rule of law at home and abroad.

These threats and actions fly in the face of almost everything the UN and its charter are about.

As the UN prepares to welcome leaders to its annual general assembly later this month there is anxiety about who will show up. The real dealmaking on peace and security or contentious international rows about tariffs or debt seem to take place anywhere but the UN.

‘Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claims that the president “has closed seven global conflicts” around the world and has scoffed at the UN's record by contrast. At the same time Trump has decimated US funding for UN activities, including lifesaving public health and humanitarian interventions. The Lancet has estimated his cuts could cost up to 14 million lives.

The UN itself seems frozen by the betrayal and rejection of its first parent. Its origin story is the personal vision of President Franklin D Roosevelt, whose dream imbued its charter and values. The US has hardly been a steady guardian of that vision over the subsequent 80 years, but it has been enough of one to allow that basic relationship to remain intact.