The UN plays a crucial role on the ground in wars and disasters
As conflicts rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, the picture that the United Nations in New York paints to the world is often one of division and paralysis. But far from the UN headquarters, things look different; the agencies are carrying out relief efforts under the most challenging circumstances.
On a recent day, U.N. officials in the Gaza Strip sheltered more than 30,000 people in a vocational center who slept on bare floors amid puddles of mud and overflowing sewage. “People have lost everything and they need everything,” said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA, the UN organization that cares for Palestinians, who traveled to Gaza for two days together with the agency’s Commissioner General, Philippe Lazzarini.
The officials also tried to target their own staff. A U.N. staffer told them he finds a place to hide and cry every day to cope, Ms. Touma said. So far, 130 UNRWA staff have been killed in the war and many are missing, feared dead under the rubble.
The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II with the intention of “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war” by maintaining international peace and stability. Although it has failed to achieve that ambitious goal, it has emerged as a major global humanitarian aid organization that many call more important than ever.
In Ukraine, where an estimated 17 million people need assistance, the UN refugee agency has provided cash assistance, housing and shelter. Following the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, UN convoys carrying food, water, tents and medicine provided the main lifeline for Syrians living in opposition-held areas. In Afghanistan, UNICEF provides food and medical care to 15 million children.
“Today the world is politically fragmented and too often fails to tackle the root causes of conflict, climate change and lack of development,” said Martin Griffiths, the United Nations chief of humanitarian and emergency assistance, in an interview with the Times. . “We must step in to provide lifesaving assistance, and I see this as an extension of the foundation’s original purpose, not a step away from it.”
The work is expensive and dangerous. UNRWA, which was struggling financially even before the Israel-Gaza war, has been so overwhelmed by its efforts to shelter and feed displaced Gaza residents that experts say it remains unclear when it will be able to resume normal operations and what role it will play. it could play a role in the recovery of Gaza after the war. ends.
And it’s just one instance. Operating around the world, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Development Program, to name a few, have a combined workforce of more than 125,000 people.
“This UN concentration on trying to improve the lot of humanity to reduce the likelihood of fighting has over the years spawned a plethora of specialized UN agencies designed to alleviate or cure the ills of our world’s population. heal,” he said. Stephen Schlesinger, historian and author of ‘Act of Creation’, a book about the founding of the United Nations.
The United Nations’ logistics capabilities far exceed the capabilities of the private sector or government aid agencies. It operates its own air fleet. It has warehouses around the world in countries including Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Denmark. The World Food Program alone operates twenty ships on any given day.
Critics, including some former top officials, have said the United Nations is too bureaucratic, has covered up internal scandals and has been slow to enforce meaningful changes that would streamline the bloated budget and overlapping mandates of some agencies.
“There is certainly an organizational culture resistant to change within the UN,” said Eugene Chen, a former senior UN official who worked on financial and reform issues and is now director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. “The fact that the UN is not the most effective and efficient organization in the world is not solely the UN’s fault; part of the blame must lie with the Member States.”
Yet supporters of the United Nations often say that if the organization did not exist, it would have to be invented, even if it has failed to stop the war.
“We see the UN losing space as a mediator in conflicts and withdrawing from large-scale peacekeeping operations in many countries,” said Richard Gowan, an expert at the United Nations for International Crisis Group, an independent conflict prevention agency. “What the UN is left with are the humanitarian instruments. This remains the basis of UN involvement in many crises, and it is very difficult to replace.”
The United Nations has developed slowly since its founding in 1945. After the Cold War, UN peacekeepers flourished for a while. Also known as the Blue Helmets, they are drawn from the police and armed forces of member states to help war-torn countries keep the peace. The UN Security Council approved peacekeeping missions in places such as Somalia, Cambodia, Kosovo and El Salvador. a peacekeeping department was founded in 1992 to meet the growing demand for UN peacekeepers.
But that too has taken a hit in recent years as the reputation of UN peacekeepers has been tarnished by a series of controversies. Peacekeepers were accused of sexual violence and exploitation of women and girls in the Central African Republic and Congo and accused of spreading a cholera epidemic in Haiti. There are currently seventeen peacekeeping missions operational.
And recently the Security Council, the 15-member body tasked with keeping the world safe and stable, has been virtually paralyzed due to growing divisions among its five permanent members – the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain – who are quickly taking advantage of their veto power to hinder action.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres, who came to the helm of the organization from a humanitarian background and led the refugee agency, appears to have endorsed the new reality the organization is facing. Most of Mr. Guterres’ efforts when conflict broke out during his tenure focused on humanitarian diplomacy.
Mr. Guterres offered to mediate in the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would not even take his calls for a while, Mr. Guterres’ spokesman said. Mr. Guterres focused instead on easing the war’s impact on global food prices and security, and on evacuating civilians from Russian-occupied cities.
He fared no better in the most recent war. Israeli officials are angry at some of his comments about the fight and have called for his resignation. The United Nations did not play a major role in the negotiations on the release of hostages or the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Guterres’ role once again revolved around humanitarian aid. He has negotiated access for aid convoys, including those delivering fuel to UN facilities and hospitals, and ensuring the safety of his staff in Gaza.
Stéphane Dujarric, the United Nations spokesman, said the lack of unity among Security Council members fueled the perception of the United Nations’ irrelevance, but added: “There is no veto in humanitarian aid. The question is access and money.”
The Security Council has also increasingly focused on passing humanitarian resolutions when faced with political deadlocks. After weeks of inaction and veto rounds by the United States, Russia and China over the wording of a resolution on the war between Israel and Hamas, the Council finally reached a resolution that was limited to a humanitarian focus.
Humanitarian work can be extremely dangerous. Aid workers have been shot, kidnapped or forced to flee, leaving behind their belongings. According to the United Nations, more personnel have been killed in Gaza than in all conflicts combined in the organization’s history.
But the work continues. In southern Gaza, where Palestinians fleeing airstrikes in the north took shelter and where many are now facing new orders to evacuate, visiting U.N. officials described a landscape of collapsed buildings and piles of rubble and solid waste. Shops and pharmacies were closed. Only a few products were sold at a vegetable stall, and people stood in long lines in front of an open bakery. Everywhere they looked there were children, officials said.
UNRWA has been the coordinator and distributor of the aid crossing from Rafah, Egypt, to Gaza, which reached a maximum of around 200 trucks per day during the recent ceasefire. Mr. Lazzarini recently told reporters that 1.2 million Gazans, more than half of the displaced, are now seeking shelter in U.N. facilities.
Only a limited amount of aid has entered Gaza since fighting resumed on Friday. Humanitarian groups condemned Israel’s latest call for Gaza residents to evacuate as the invasion spreads in the south, warning that civilians would have nowhere to go to seek refuge.
Mr. Lazzarini said in a statement Monday that citizens “need everything: food, water, shelter and, above all, safety.”
He added: “No place is safe in Gaza.”