“IT would be hard to imagine a scenario as threatening as the one we’re facing right now,” the outgoing secretary general of the UN, António Guterres acknowledged on the eve of this week’s annual shindig in New York. His calculations for this grim pronouncement stretched from the consequences of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran and the repercussions of the conflict over Ukraine to the increasingly dire evidence of climate change and the emerging threat of artificial intelligence (AI).

Lip service and short shrift are the best that can be predicted for the genocides proceeding apace in Palestine and Sudan — precisely the kind of catastrophes the UN was created to prevent eight decades ago. Like some of his predecessors, Guterres frequently sounds appropriate warnings, but implicitly acknowledges that the UN is effectively helpless in dealing with wars, can’t do very much about famines, and campaigns to exterminate entire segments of humanity are equally beyond its ability to prevent.

Whether the UN serves any useful purpose in the 21st century is a question that has often been raised, but is yet to be convincingly answered. Among its vast array of branches, there are several that still play a key role in stalling........

© Dawn