Editorial

The ‘United’ Nations of the world, arguably more divided than ever before in recent history, met in New York this week on the 80th anniversary of the world body. In spite of the commemorative flavour, disruptions such as the host country’s visa denials, delays to visiting dignitaries and technical malfunctions in escalators and teleprompters sounded discordant notes as the sessions got underway, in a way mirroring the deep malaise in multilateralism and the international system that hangs over the current session. It was anything but a celebration of the world community.

The 79th UNGA (UN General Assembly) session last year ended on a cautiously high note as member states adopted the ‘Pact for the Future’, the most wide-ranging international agreement in many years, which was intended to energise a flagging United Nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Much of the enthusiasm for those aspirations has already receded this year as the 193 member states grapple with an altered reality in the multilateral, principally with the current US (Trump) Administration’s withdrawal from its leadership role in the global forum, among other challenges.

The balance sheets of the past failures and successes of the UN continue to be weighed in the background of its current trauma. Nowhere are its triumphs and tragedies better reflected than in the issue of Palestine, which has been rightly propelled to its long overdue centre-stage focus at the 80th UNGA in light of the unfolding dire humanitarian situation and endless deaths of civilians in Gaza, the perversity of refusing to stop the genocide, and Israel’s latest outrage in its drive to occupy Gaza City.

On Monday, the UNGA kicked off with France and Saudi Arabia co-chairing the resumed Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine on the basis of the two-state solution.

Palestine is a UN tragedy because although with Resolution 181 in 1947, the British entrusted the Palestine issue to the UN, enabling the recognition of two independent states, viz., Israel and Palestine, through almost eight long and arduous decades of war, occupation, repression and fear and now even genocide—the state of Palestine never materialised. The major Western powers, for all their grandiloquent talk, established only one state, viz., Israel. And the Security Council, entrusted to be the guardian of international peace and security, has failed to stop the ongoing war, famine and genocide because of the veto of the world’s most powerful state—the United States of America.

Despite this abject failure, to its credit, the UN, through multiple deliberations and decisions, has served as the global forum which enshrined the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine to statehood on the basis of the two-state solution. This outcome was thanks to the persistent efforts of the states of the Global South—the Non-Aligned Movement, including Sri Lanka—which mobilised within the UN and stood strong and relentless as the moral conscience of the world on the Palestine issue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets the credit for reawakening Resolution 181 after all these years. His manic two-year genocide against the people of Occupied Palestine has clearly gone well beyond the pale of international tolerance. This was amply demonstrated when the General Assembly hall emptied as delegation after delegation walked out in protest as he took the floor. And with an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, more and more states likely to announce that the PM is not welcome to visit; the reason also for his circuitous detour en route by plane to New York to avoid flying over the airspace of protesting states.

It was unfortunate, however, that President A.K. Dissanayake was unable to attend Monday’s High-Level Meeting, which was boycotted by the US and Israel, and that he is so far unwilling to pronounce any direct condemnation of Israel over the unfolding genocide and humanitarian crisis. Sri Lanka was also among the few delegations with a solitary diplomat’s presence in the hall when PM Netanyahu addressed the UNGA. It is clear, though, that for the fulfilment of a two-state solution, Sri Lanka must continue its recognition of Israel as well and speak up for the peace and security of both states—Palestine and Israel.

There is still a host of obstacles to the realisation of the two-state solution and the practical realisation of a viable sovereign state of Palestine. Beyond recognition by individual states, efforts by Palestine to be recognised as a UN Member State will surely be vetoed by the US at the UN Security Council. Will this fresh momentum for freedom for Palestine be merely symbolic as a result? The restrictions from Israeli occupation and severe financial crisis impede Palestine from operating meaningfully as a sovereign entity.

On the ground, the Israeli military blitz into Gaza and Israeli civilian settlements in the occupied West Bank area are attempts to cut off a future state of Palestine as a contiguous territory. In reality, for all the world’s support, a workable way forward for the state of Palestine to become the 194th member state of the UN is still elusive.

At the end of the high-level week in New York, the overall impression is that the UN has survived the week—it is down but not yet out. The UN Secretary General must be relieved that the difficult times on the horizon are not his responsibility but that of his successor, who will assume duties in January 2027 and whose selection is already underway.

It was said of a past era, ‘the old world is dying and the new is yet to be born.’ Behind the optics, the UNGA this year is a microcosm of a world in such a moment of transition from ‘unipolar multilateralism’ to an emerging era of ‘multipolar multilateralism’. Aspiring powers such as China are moving to fill the leadership void, and new global alignments are being formed or reshaped in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

In such times of realignment, the majority of the family of nations—the nations of the Global South, which includes Sri Lanka—must seize the opportunity to shape the global system to suit their priorities as voices of moderation in a forum that was, after all, built to ensure justice, equity, peace and development for the people of the world.

At the end of the day, even a dysfunctional UN with its unparalleled convening power and the powerful principle of sovereign equality of all states, big and small, is still better than an imperfect world without a UN.