Security Council

As Russia takes over the UN Security Council presidency, the world confronts the baffling irony of a nation, embroiled in the Ukraine war and led by a convicted war criminal, guiding an organisation entrusted with the preservation of global peace and security.

After the Soviet Union invaded Finland, the League of Nations kicked the country from its council. Why doesn't the UN do that too? Well, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it is bound to the moral low ground.

Would you entrust a child you love to the care of a school or nursery if you knew that not only many of its teachers, but the school board itself, consisted of child abusers, rapists and murderers? Of course not! And yet that is exactly what we are doing when we entrust world peace and human rights to the United Nations.

Apart from the hackneyed pleas to resolve the differences and a blunt reassertion of the facts there were no enlightened solutions aimed at finding ways of de-escalating the Ukraine crisis.

Participating members in this UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine attempt their best with this bland, shallow and awkwardly structured meeting, which can be characterised in 6 words: “Too late”, “nothing new” and “bad directing”.

On July 29, the UN had a Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on the deteriorating situation in Myanmar. US ambassador and senior advisor for political affairs, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, summarised the dire situation, stating: “Humanitarian aid workers inside Burma are sounding the alarm.