Monday, 15 September 2014

The UN General Assembly is now around the corner

The annual session of the UN General Assembly is about to start. The agenda is diversified and it includes the new global approach to the development goals, environment and climate change matters, population growth issues as well as the usual high rhetoric but politically important speeches by some key world leaders.

Unfortunately, the UN is not in a position to come up with a road map for some very critical on-going conflicts, like the one in Ukraine or the situation in the Middle East, including an accepted agenda to fight extremism and human rights violations. Critics would say it shows the irrelevance of the UN as a mechanism for conflict resolution when the scale of the conflict is too big and related to the contradictory interests of powerful countries.

It is however too much to talk about irrelevance. The UN does what it can, what the member states allow it to do. And in some areas of intervention, like the ones I mention at the beginning of this post, it has done quite a bit. And it is still the only hope that remains for many in very poor and ill governed countries. 

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