The United Nations: Retaining relevance in a conflict-ridden world

The Democracy Forum and TDF President Lord Bruce invite you to a live webinar,

‘The United Nations: Retaining relevance in a conflict-ridden world’’
on
Wednesday January 17, 2024
2-3.30pm UK time (GMT)

Moderator
Humphrey Hawksley, Author & former BBC Asia correspondent

Panellists
Prof. Richard Caplan, Professor of International Relations, Dept of Politics & International Relations, University of Oxford
Dr Joel Ng, Research Fellow ; Deputy Head of Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dr Alynna J. Lyon, Professor of Political Science; Editor-in-Chief, Global Governance; Faculty Fellow, Global Racial, Social & Inequality Lab, University of New Hampshire
Maya Ungar, UN Project Officer, International Crisis Group
Closing remarks by Barry Gardiner MP, Chair of TDF

TDF President Lord Bruce referenced a recent warning by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that, in a changing world, international institutions have not kept pace and may become part of the problem rather than the solution, so they need to ‘reform or rupture’.
Richard Caplan, Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, underscored the importance of managing, without necessarily lowering, our expectations of what it can achieve. By design, the organisation relies for its effectiveness on cooperation among member states, he said, especially the five permanent members of the Security Council, who have the power to veto measures proposed in response to threats to peace. That cooperation was evident when, for example, imposing sanctions on North Korea in 2006 or establishing a no-fly zone over Libya in 2011 to protect civilians, but was markedly lacking more recently in response to, for example, the Syrian civil war and Israel’s war in Gaza.
Dr Joel Ng, Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, addressed two central questions: how the UNSC is to function amid increasing great power rivalry, and the possible implications of this for small states. The world is being restructured into a more power-based system, said Ng, and this growing inequality and hierarchical structure will lead to a more conflict-ridden world.
Examining UN reform and the organisation’s relevance from a broader historical perspective was Dr Alynna J. Lyon, Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. This notion of relevance has emerged time and again over the decades, but Lyon argued that the UN has never been more relevant than it is today – for, in addition to its mandate of conflict resolution, it also deals with global problems such as poverty, climate change and immigration issues
Issues of UNSC reform and the increased vocalness of the global south were focal points for Maya Ungar, a UN Project Officer at International Crisis Group. At its core, she said. the UN is shaped by the needs and desires of its member states, and is therefore only as relevant as its members will allow. There have been many global shocks in recent times, such as Covid, Ukraine, Gaza, etc, which have challenged the legitimacy and relevance of the UN.
TDF Chair Barry Gardiner MP closed the discussion with the thought that we need to understand the UN as an organisation tasked with bringing all strands of global insecurity together, and trying to provide a framework for security in the world.
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