It was a turbulent week in New York as the United Nations General Assembly opened its sessions, filled with speeches, some inspiring and others mired in bureaucracy or idealism. Yet one thing was clear: we are facing an international institution that has succeeded in becoming a platform for rhetoric but has failed to translate its rhetoric into protection.
Before placing all the blame on the UN and its agencies, however, we must recognize that the organization's strength and the effectiveness of its resolutions depend on the willingness of member states, especially the major powers on the Security Council, to uphold international decisions and preserve their legitimacy by adhering to international law. Speeches alone are not enough.
This contradiction raises five strategic issues: the erosion of legitimacy, the shift of decision-making outside the institution, the use of funding as a tool of subjugation, the fragmentation of the organization's interconnected functions, and the need to reform power balances and representation within it.
What does it mean for the United Nations to support Palestine's right to exist as a state, or to endorse a two-state solution, while remaining unable to protect Palestinians from annihilation? How does its platform become a place where Benjamin Netanyahu can accuse his critics of moral cowardice after numerous delegations walked out in protest during his speech? What value is there in recognizing a people's rights if their very survival remains dependent on the will of those who possess military power, while the organization is left with little more than condemnations and appeals to stop the killing?
These questions expose the core crisis of the international system: the gap between declaring rights and being able to protect them. The United Nations is not a world government with an independent army and an authority above states. Rather, it is a political and legal arrangement whose members have pledged to share responsibilities. When powerful states obstruct those responsibilities and then blame the institution for its paralysis, they are ultimately judging the consequences of their own policies while absolving themselves of responsibility.
The first issue is legitimacy. The practical value of international decisions derives from respect for them and from the costs imposed on those who violate them. When unenforced resolutions accumulate, the powerful learn that they can ignore them, while the weak learn that acknowledgment of their suffering offers no guarantee of ending it.
At that point, the value of law varies according to who invokes it and who their allies are. Restoring legitimacy requires mechanisms for follow-up, implementation timetables, and diplomatic and economic measures that make violations costly rather than rewarding perpetrators with more time.
In Palestine, protecting the right to self-determination means protecting people, land, and the institutions that make statehood possible. Recognition that coincides with the destruction of the conditions necessary for a state's existence risks becoming little more than linguistic compensation for a political loss.
The real test is preventing negotiations from being used to alter facts on the ground until the state recognized in principle exists only in name, with no viable space in which to live.
The second issue is the migration of decision-making outside the institution. The question is not how many heads of state attend, but where settlements are negotiated and who participates in them. When a small number of actors negotiate the future of a country and then ask the UN to endorse the outcome, broad membership is reduced to the role of an audience.
Limited negotiations may sometimes be necessary, but their legitimacy depends on the participation of those directly concerned, compliance with international law, and implementation guarantees subject to accountability. Otherwise, the United Nations becomes little more than a registry office for existing power balances.
The third issue is funding as a form of power. Those who can withhold resources can shape priorities even without amending the UN Charter. When voluntary and conditional contributions replace stable financing, the influence of donors expands at the expense of institutional independence.
What is needed is predictable funding, the fulfillment of financial obligations, and transparency linking expenditures to outcomes. Efficiency matters, but reducing reform to budget cuts risks destroying the very capacities reform is supposed to improve.
The fourth issue is the fragmentation of the organization's functions. It is impossible to fund humanitarian relief while neglecting conflict prevention, to call for elections without functioning institutions, or to urge refugees to return without security guarantees. These are interconnected links in the same chain, and disabling one transfers the burden to the others.
More dangerously, aid can become a permanent mechanism for managing the consequences of violence while those responsible for producing that violence remain immune from accountability. Humanitarian action must therefore be connected to a political process that protects rights, while preserving the independence of relief efforts so that even bread itself does not become a bargaining chip.
The fifth issue is reforming power and representation. Expanding the Security Council may address deficits in representation, but it will not overcome paralysis if it merely reproduces the same privileges. Genuine reform should be measured by improvements in decision-making capacity, accountability for those who obstruct action, and fairer representation for marginalized regions.
It should begin by restricting the use of the veto in cases of mass atrocities and by building coalitions capable of advancing available legal and diplomatic measures rather than waiting for a comprehensive agreement that may never come.
From an Arab perspective, this requires turning annual participation into sustained action: coordinating voting positions, financing essential institutions, mobilizing partners, and linking bilateral relationships to concrete measures that protect Palestinians.
Numerical majorities become meaningful power only through organization, persistence, and a willingness to bear costs. It also requires identifying who is responsible for each commitment, what resources are needed to implement it, and when outcomes will be reviewed.
The future of the United Nations depends on the willingness of its members to transform commitments into capabilities. Israel must also understand that such policies carry political, economic, and legal costs from which it cannot indefinitely escape. Once those costs become real, the entire landscape may change.
The catastrophe in Gaza demands a reassessment of the foundations of the international order. Just as the horrors of the Second World War prompted the creation of new institutions and rules, what has happened in Gaza should lead to a system that genuinely protects people and holds perpetrators accountable. This tragedy must not end with yet another statement of condemnation.
