United Nations Of An Unequal World

By Mobolaji Sanusi

“If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.”
—-Norman Cousins(1915-1990)

The week-long high-level 81st United Nations General Assembly has come and gone with nearly one hundred and fifty world leaders reportedly in attendance. Despite the unnecessary cacophony over the absence of some leaders, two things held my attention: The first is this year’s theme titled: “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All”, and the second, being the enthralling speeches of Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein, Kenya’s President William Ruto, and Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, GCFR.

The three leaders offered sincere interrogations of the theme, and their observations will no doubt shape the debate about the inevitable need to remodel the obsolete structure of the global body. One thing is very discerning: the United Nations, formed in 1945 to cure a disunited and inequitably skewed world, now presides over the very mischief it was ab initio meant to cure. This fact is not unknown to all, which leads to the question: How faithful has the United Nations been to its own mandate and its theme of restoring trust, managing transformation, and delivering for all?

It is a simple question, but a difficult one to answer when a superpower that is one amongst five superpowers just because of being the single largest financial contributor to the body, operates on the principle of “he who pays the piper dictates the tune.”

This should not be the case, but sadly, it is the contemporary reality. The United Nations presides over a world body of 193 member states where the rule of might often prevails over the rule of law; where the world is ruled by precept and not by example. A world where owners of resource-rich lands in Africa and other continents are wantonly stripped of their natural resources, drained of their human capital, routinely persecuted and exploited in a supposedly ‘free world’; and against their will, condemned to remain chronically underdeveloped with stolen commonwealth by leaders of these retarded countries kept in so called developed countries’ vaults.

With no army of its own, no independent financial base, and with routine gridlock among the five permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council, it may not be entirely untrue to infer that the United Nations is largely toothless and often ineffective. Its tepid response to glaring imbalances and pronounced injustices across the world, often encouraged by the so-called superpowers, has done more damage to its image.

There are antecedents of institutional negligence and outright timidity by the global body in confronting persecution. There are empirical examples that give substance to this impression. In 1994, the United Nations acted hesitantly in Rwanda, despite its Force Commander, General Roméo Dallaire’s warning of impending mass killing. The Secretariat failed to act decisively and misled the Security Council into voting to reduce the number of peacekeepers in the country. That costly decision left over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead.

During the Bosnian War in 1995, the United Nations erroneously declared Srebrenica a “safe area” under its protection, despite knowing that the lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers on the ground could not deter Bosnian Serb forces. The enclave was overrun and more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred.

In the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and has claimed over 500,000 lives, repeated vetoes by Russia and China created a deadlock that blocked robust intervention and prevented punitive action for atrocities committed. In Haiti in 2010, following a devastating earthquake, Nepalese United Nations peacekeepers inadvertently introduced cholera into the country due to poor sanitation at their camp, leading to the deaths of over 10,000 Haitians.

At the turn of the century, United Nations peacekeepers were accused of sundry crimes including sexual exploitation, abuse of women and minors in Bosnia, Cambodia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Few were brought to justice, pointing again to the United Nations’ sometimes shoddy handling of its foreign operations.

Perhaps, the most telling is the United Nations’ timidity in applying institutional censure when international law is violated by especially its largest financial contributor. In Nicaragua v. United States (1986), the International Court of Justice ruled that the United States violated international law by mining Nicaraguan harbours and supporting the Contra rebels.

The United States ignored the ruling and used its Security Council veto to block resolutions seeking to enforce it. Similarly, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext of weapons of mass destruction, without Security Council authorisation, remains a clear breach of international law, yet it attracted no institutional consequences.

Even clear-cut human rights violations under the Trump administration could not be properly investigated, because the United Nations has no mechanism to compel a sovereign superpower to submit to external human rights oversight. Yet the same United States will compel the United Nations to move against less powerful countries accused of similar or other violations.

If the global body cannot be holistic in compelling members to act in accordance with its laws, what then can it realistically achieve? This question becomes pertinent given the open contempt shown toward the body by the current American leadership and sometimes other superpowers.

President Donald Trump has rarely hidden his disdain for the United Nations. Addressing the General Assembly this week, he reportedly threatened to “annihilate” Iran if it failed to comply with his demands. This is not new. Trump has consistently viewed the United Nations through a transactional lens that favours bilateral deals over multilateral diplomacy, portraying the organisation as inefficient even when United States’ undue influence is itself a major reason for its paralysis.

At the 80th General Assembly, Trump derisively asked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” and dismissed its diplomacy with the remark: “All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.” He also criticised the global body’s migration cash assistance to asylum seekers, accusing it of “funding an assault on Western countries” and declaring: “The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them.”

In 2016, Trump described the UN as “utterly weak and incompetent” and “not a friend of democracy.” He also dismissed it on Twitter as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time” after the Security Council voted in late 2016 to condemn Israeli settlements. In March this year, a report by the UN-backed Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination warning that “racist hate speech” from Trump and other politicians was fuelling human rights abuses against migrants was dismissed by his administration as “useless and biased.”

In 2018, Trump described African nations, El Salvador and Haiti, as “shithole countries.” This drew condemnation, including from the United Nations, which described the remarks as “shocking,” “shameful” and “clearly racist.” The matter ended there without consequence.

Beyond rhetoric, President Trump has operationalised the “paymaster” doctrine by strategically withdrawing funding from various humanitarian programmes, routinely leaving over a billion dollars in United Nations dues unpaid, and pulling the United States out of key United Nations agreements and bodies, including UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council.

With the foregoing, the United Nations has been, whether deliberately or not, complicit in inimical acts in Africa, Gaza, Iran and other parts of the world out of sheer helplessness or through outright connivance.

King Abdullah II of Jordan was unsparing in his address. On September 22, 2026, he said Israel was attempting “to erase Palestinian life and impose a new territorial reality”. He added: “For decades, I’ve stood before this Assembly and warned of the dangers of leaving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict unresolved. But the international community chose to manage the conflict, not confront it. And every new Israeli violation was treated as temporary, diverting attention from the reality being created on the ground, until temporary became permanent and permanent became policy.”

He continued: “Of course, this is not the world’s only injustice, but it is one of the world’s longest-running occupations. A basic question: If international law can be ignored for decades, then what exactly is that law worth? And how can we enforce it if we won’t even call out its violations?”

The Jordanian King’s intervention was complemented by Kenya’s President William Ruto’s emphatic call for his continent. Ruto argued that Africa’s fifty-four countries represent almost one quarter of UN membership but have no permanent Council seat. He said: “You cannot claim to be the United Nations while disregarding the voice of 54 nations. It is not possible. Africa is no longer willing to wait on the margins of global governance while decisions about peace, security and development are made without our understanding, without our perspectives and without our voice. Africa’s exclusion undermines the very credibility of the United Nations.”

He further stated: “Africa demands at the very least two permanent seats with full rights, including the right to veto, and two additional non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. The world must understand that reforming the Security Council is not a favour to Africa or to anybody, it is a necessity for the United Nations’ own survival. If the United Nations is to remain relevant in this century, it must reflect today’s realities, not the post-war power arrangement of 1945.”

In a statement delivered on his behalf by Vice President Kashim Shettima, President Tinubu equally called for a radical shake-up of the United Nations, with the reconstitution of the Security Council to grant Africa permanent seats as take off point.

While demanding at least two permanent seats for the continent – including full rights, responsibilities, and veto power – along with a total of five non-permanent seats, Tinubu said: “The reform of this institution must begin with the reconstitution of the Security Council, for the world of 2026 cannot remain captive to the distribution of power in 1945. Africa cannot continue to fill the Council’s agenda while remaining absent from its permanent membership.

“Nigeria demands, in accordance with the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration, at least two permanent seats for Africa, with all the rights and responsibilities of permanent membership, including the veto for as long as it exists, and five non-permanent seats in total. The authority to speak for humanity carries an obligation to represent it.”

The above scenarios and many more are clear manifestations that the African continent deserves a well-earned place on the UN Security Council. Also, the carnage in Gaza and the wider tensions involving Iran, Israel and the United States, including the exploitation of natural resources and the undermining of sovereignty in other countries, must stop. In particular, the escalation in the Gulf has become a logjam that should be resolved if only to save the region from further ruin and the world from avoidable socio-economic consequences.

The United Nations needs re-evaluation for continental balance, and should henceforth inject courage and fairness in handling member states’ issues. This is the only way its 2026 theme of restoring trust, managing transformation and delivering for all can be meaningful for humanity.

•Sanusi, former MD/CEO of Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency, is currently Managing Partner at AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS. (WhatsApp only: 07011117777).