Eighty years ago on October 24, 1945, the United Nations formally came into existence following the ratification of its Charter by the five members of the Security Council namely, the United States of America, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, the People’s Republic of China and 46 other nations.
At the formation of the UN, the world lay in utter ruins as a consequence of the Second World War pitting the allied forces made up of the US, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China against the axis powers composed of Nazi Germany and Japan. Over 100 million people had perished in the war and whole cities, settlements and infrastructure had been destroyed in the process. Millions more had been rendered homeless and hunger, starvation, diseases ravaged the world.
The Second World War happened in 1939, 21 years after the First World War ended in 1918. Due to the unprecedented devastation wreaked by that war, world leaders and statesmen met and decided to set up the League of Nations as a global forum for the resolution of conflicts between nations.
But in the intervening years, as the League of Nations proved incapable of achieving the task of global conflict resolution, war again broke out resulting in even more devastating consequences than the previous one.
Thus, the UN established in 1945 against the background of the massive destruction and havoc wreaked by both sides during the war, set up robust institutions that would ensure peaceful co-existence among the peoples of the world. The World leaders and statesmen who lent their influence to the formation of the UN were alarmed that within the space of three decades, the world had been engulfed in two devastating wars. They reasoned that if the trend to resolve differences among nations through wars was not checked, humanity was likely to be wiped out especially with the development and deployment of nuclear weapons during the war.
Therefore, looking back after 80 years of its formation, it must be recognised that through its mechanisms for global conflict resolution, the UN has been able to prevent a global war on the scale that happened between 1939 and 1945.
It must also be stated that the UN organs like UNESCO, FAO, WHO and others have been able to bring help and succour to millions of global citizens in the poorer regions of the world thereby lessening their plight. In many areas of the world where crises and other forms of humanitarian disaster occur, the UN readily renders assistance to victims in the form of food, medicines, shelter and safe passage out of danger areas to safety. Where necessary also, the UN had intervened with peace keeping forces to separate and protect the vulnerable affected by international and regional conflicts.
Also, through its numerous intervention programmes in the past 80 years, the UN had been able to lift millions out of poverty, diseases and starvation across the world.
In many instances in these years, the UN had deployed its institutions to pro-actively prevent wars and to immediately ensure peaceful resolution among protagonists when wars break out, thereby preventing escalation. In many ways, the UN has become to most people around the globe a beacon of hope.
But, it must also be stated that despite all these instances of constructive achievements and inclusion, the UN still labours under the long shadow of the ideological and geo-political competition of the major powers. Indeed, in some instances, the UN had proven to be either complicit in some of tragedies that had occurred in some parts of the world or had stood helpless while human atrocities are being committed. A perfect example of this is on the on-going genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian residents of Gaza.
It is a matter of great concern that in the past few decades, the vision of statesmen, which led to the formation of the UN and its sustenance over the past 80 years, is now being rendered asunder by the dangerous brinkmanship of the leadership of the major countries. By their actions, they are leading people around the world to not only question the relevance of the UN in today’s world but also to wonder whether the world is once again on the brink of another global conflict which will likely result in the end of humanity.
That is why the theme of the celebration ‘UN at 80: Shaping our Future Together’ could not have been more apt. It serves to remind us that having reached a state of mutually assured destruction of mankind, the only path to secure the future is through constructive multilateralism and collaboration among the people and nations of the world. Having come this far, what the UN needs is a renewed vision to strengthen and continue its task of fostering enduring peaceful co-existence in the world.