Why is the United Nations so ineffective?

The former Secretary-General Kofi Annan established in 2003 the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. This report identified two main problems facing the UN. Despite some successes there was a problem of effectiveness, demonstrated by the UN failures in Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia. In particular, the UN was not able to mount enforcement operations and had to rely on coalitions of the willing. The second problem was to do with the conceptual framework that might underlie effectiveness, in particular the question of how to build a consensus for new forms of action.

The Brahimi Report on Peace Keeping was another attempt at reform. Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Foreign Minister of Algeria, chaired the inquiry. The report noted that the United Nations member states have not yet implemented a standing UN army or police force. As a result, UN peace operations have been based on ad hoc coalitions of willing states. The report addressed many of the resulting dysfunctions of United Nations peace and security operations, including lack of commitment from Member States to make available peace operations personnel and resources, and particularly its inability to carry out its mission for lack of sound information collection and analysis. Also, it advocated strengthening the UN Department of Peace Operations, a department of the United Nations charged with the planning, preparation, management and direction of UN peacekeeping operations. With an annual budget of roughly $6.5 billion, the DPO is the largest UN agency by expenditure, exceeding the UN's own regular budget. The DPO traces its roots to 1948 with the creation of the United Nations Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan.

 As of March 2020, it oversighted 81,370 personnel serving in thirteen peacekeeping missions. It reports to the UN Secretariat.

In 1992, Boutros Boutros-Ghali issued “An Agenda for Peace”, a plan to strengthen the UN's capacity for preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping, but it has not had much impact. In March 2007, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution titled “Strengthening the capacity of the Organization in Peacekeeping Operations” called for the re-structuring of the department and the establishment of a separate UN Department of Field Support.

In summary, there have been many attempts to strengthen the peace keeping operations of the United Nations. This analysis believes that there are two major problems The most prominent is the weakness of the UN Secretary General. The first United Nations Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, described it as “the most impossible job on this earth”.

The UN director of Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau, is blunt: "The next UN Secretary General will be judged on his ability to stand up to the very powers that select him”. The U.N. secretary-general is the world’s chief diplomat, but most of the world doesn’t get much say in who gets the position. In the end, it’s the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent veto-wielding powers - Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States - that decide. And a Secretary General is not going to argue against the counties that endorsed his appointment that their veto power should be removed.

The military power in any UN action comes from member states, most notably from the more powerful permanent members of the security council. Understandably, those states will only act in their own direct national interests. Of the 193 UN member states, only 26 are classed as ‘Full Democracies’. Only 58 of the member states supported the anti-Russia resolution over Ukraine

The author of this analysis argues that the peace institutions of this world should force a strengthening of the peace keeping operations of the United Nations through three actions One, strengthening the ability of the Secretary General to act independently of the five veto powers, and two, providing for the United Nations with its own standing peacekeeping force. The UN itself admits that “missions have sometimes lacked the personnel and equipment to meet … threats” The third is to act as a supervisor of plebiscites in attacked or conquered countries to determine what the people there actually wish. It is ensuring democracy – that the wishes of the people – are adopted. Two examples are presented: Russia in Crimea in 2014 and again today in the conquered parts of the Ukraine. The plebiscites managed by Russia are widely considered to be faked.

If the peacekeeping institutions worldwide were to urge their members and supporters to vote only for politicians, regardless of party or country, who would support an independent United Nations, able to act freely on its charter to ensure peace, we would achieve a less conflicted world.