A few days ago, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “dangerous erosion” in respect for international law and the UN Charter, stressing that the lack of commitment to international law is pushing the world toward chaos and escalating conflicts. This is not the first time he has voiced such a warning, as successive international events continue to transform the global order into one based more than ever on the rule of force rather than the rule of law, leading to grave human rights violations and the expansion of conflicts worldwide (such as the crises in Ukraine, Sudan, and the Middle East), and so on.
Eighty years after the founding of the United Nations, we can draw a direct line between the creation of the organization and the prevention of a third world war. Yet the erosion and fracturing now affecting the wall of the international legal system are preventing the Security Council from acting with unity and decisiveness. They are placing enormous pressure on the purposes of the United Nations, deepening geopolitical divisions, and increasing international risks, including the accelerating arms race among states and the growing licenses granted to industrial companies in the military sector.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the United States, which came under significant pressure during the recent Iran war regarding the stockpile of weapons and ammunition available to its military. Modern wars consume enormous quantities of precision missiles, air-defense systems, and advanced munitions at a pace faster than military factories can rapidly replenish them. This has led countries such as the United States, Russia, and those in Europe to try to address challenges related to supply chains and production capacity by accelerating manufacturing and creating new partnerships.
Moreover, the global structures tasked with resolving problems — most notably the UN Security Council — lack the effectiveness hoped for in an international security environment marked by ambiguity, suspicion, uncertainty, and the unknown.
The crisis of legitimacy within the United Nations is reflected primarily in the fact that the structure of the Security Council is still based on historical equations dating back to 1945, whereby only five countries monopolize permanent membership and veto power, while vast regions of the world — particularly Africa, Latin America, and South Asia —remain almost entirely absent from permanent representation within this international organization. Unsurprisingly, this situation has drawn endless criticism from many countries that believe the Council no longer fairly reflects current international balances or the aspirations of the peoples of the Global South.
Neither the current UN Secretary-General nor any of his predecessors has the power to bring about genuine reform within the Security Council or establish new roles and decision-making mechanisms that could eventually democratize the work of the United Nations. All of them understand the nature and limits of their duties, as well as the red lines drawn by the major powers for the Secretary-General and for the organization as a whole. Consequently, reform remains an extremely difficult and highly complex issue, especially since major crises and dramatic world events are often handled through agreements among the great powers outside the framework of the United Nations rather than within it, and that is the bitter truth.
Furthermore, any serious attempt to reform the UN Charter runs into a fundamental legal obstacle embodied in Article 108 of the Charter, which stipulates that: “Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified ... by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.”
In addition, the global system continues to suffer from a clear inability to mobilize and expand the financing necessary to save the lives of millions of people around the world and to build peaceful societies that are more resilient in the face of mounting crises and challenges. Although several important initiatives have been launched to achieve these goals, such as the Pact for the Future, the UN80 Initiative, and the Sevilla Commitment on Financing for Development, the results achieved thus far remain below expectations, amid persistent development gaps and worsening humanitarian and economic crises at the international level.
Against this bitter international reality, the world today appears more in need than ever of restoring the spirit of the UN Charter, not as a rigid legal text, but as a moral and political framework for organizing international relations. The continued logic of domination, double standards, and the obstruction of mechanisms of international legitimacy will lead only to unproductive chaos, deepening crises, and eroding confidence in the international order that we are witnessing today. Reforming the United Nations is no longer a political luxury or a theoretical demand; it has become a historic necessity to guarantee the security and stability of humanity and to establish a more balanced and more just international order.
