Weekly Blog - 15 September 2024 - UN General Assembly
Considering the importance of the UN as the General Assembly meets this week.
UN General Assembly
This week the annual UN General Assembly began to meet in New York on Tuesday 10 September for its 79th session. The meetings will run until Tuesday 24 September and will include the High-level segment when world leaders will be in attendance, and for the first time a Summit for the Future, looking at safeguarding the world for future generations. Also on the agenda over these two weeks will be a wide range of others issues including conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere; sea-level rise; antimicrobial resistance; progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals; climate change and gender equality.
In a world facing such challenges, it can be easy to dismiss what often feels like an annual talking shop where nations queue up to be seen and get their speeches on the record, whilst seemingly powerless to effect real change on the ground. However, global institutions like the United Nations play a vital role.
International Institutions
The United Nations was set up in 1945 as one of a number of key global institutions, including The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that were established at the end of the Second World War, to help create a more stable and peaceful international system. In the decades since its foundation (whilst of course far from perfect, and often failing), the UN has played a crucial role in helping to secure stability; enabling international cooperation to address global challenges like extreme poverty and climate change; and establishing important norm-setting values of freedom, peace, the rule of law and human rights.
As Christians what should the UN mean to us?
As Christians we read clearly in the Bible that suffering caused by wars, unjust regimes, crushing poverty, or the devastation of God’s wonderful creation, are not things that God wants to see. It is part of our mission and the mission of the church to address such needs. Arise’s report, The Arise Manifesto, looks in detail at what the Bible has to say, and what history and the world’s leading academic experts have to teach us, about the practical ways we can do this, and finds that international institutions like the UN have an important role to play.
The UN is the major forum where countries can come together and work through negotiations, conventions and treaties to tackle global issues that cross national boundaries like climate change, terrorism, global security, the arms trade or pandemics. Of course with over 190 nations, each with different views, progress will always be slow and a matter of much compromise, moving forward gradually, two steps forward and one step back. But nevertheless, such global deals are essential if the world is to tackle global challenges (Arise Manifesto, pg 272 – 275).
Over the decades the UN has also played a crucial role in passing, upholding and strengthening international norm setting standards and agreements on democracy, good governance, human rights, peace, tackling poverty and protecting the environment. Even if the ability to enforce such standards is often inevitably compromised and limited, the existence, repetition and continued strengthening of such standards has been crucial for building a shared global consensus of what good governance, peaceful co-existence, democracy and human rights looks like. They set good global benchmarks which the world can be held to and work towards, which fit remarkably well with Biblical principles (Arise Manifesto, pg 122, 125, 203).
Finally, the UN has also played a key role in maintaining international peace and stability in the decades since the Second World War. It is one of the major forums where disputes can be mediated and negotiated, and tireless diplomacy can de-escalate tensions. This is true for helping avert major international conflicts, but also for the dozens of internal civil wars, especially in developing nations, which have plagued the world since 1945. The diplomacy, mediation, negotiation and peacekeeping forces provided by the UN have played crucial roles in limiting and reducing violence. Once again such efforts are never perfect and without criticism, there are compromises and huge failures too. But the world would certainly be a less secure, less safe, more violent and poorer place without the UN (Arise Manifesto, pg 125).
So, for all their imperfections, the UN and other international institutions play a crucial role and should be supported and strengthened. Where such forums do not work as well as they should, rather than give up on them, the world should focus its efforts on reforming and improving them to make them ever more transparent, democratic and more agile. In a changing world, such continued reform and change will always be necessary.
Ultimately international institutions like the UN can only do what member states want them to do. If they are not taking enough action, that’s not the fault of the institution itself, but the lack of appetite from the member states. As individual Christians, the church and the world, we must all pressure member states for more international action on peace, human rights, social justice, development and the environment, to see more from the international institutions, like the UN. One key way you can do that is by signing up to receive weekly actions from Arise.
Christians, nations and the world need and should support key international institutions like the UN. Progress will always be gradual and a matter of compromise, but the alternative is a lawless international system where the strongest countries dominate weaker ones without any restraint at all, and global issues go unaddressed. We need the UN. Let’s celebrate it.
Find out more
Arise Manifesto – Find out more about the importance of international institutions like the UN in the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world.
Latest news – Latest news from the Arise movement.
Sign up – Found this blog online, or sent it by a friend? Sign up to receive weekly blogs from Arise directly.