The United Nations chief sharply criticised the powerful but deeply divided Security Council at a high-level meeting on Wednesday for a failure of leadership to end wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and beyond.
“Peace demands action. And peace demands leadership,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the 15-member council charged with ensuring international peace and security. “Instead, we’re seeing deepening geopolitical divisions and mistrust.”
He pointed to repeated violations of the UN Charter and international law, conflicts multiplying and becoming more deadly, and civilians paying the steepest price.
The council has been blocked from any action on Ukraine because Russia is a veto-wielding member and a party to the conflict – invading its neighbour in violation of the UN Charter, which requires all members to ensure the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all other nations.
It has been stymied in taking tough action on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza because of Israel’s close ally, the United States, another veto-wielding member. And in Sudan, there are divisions among some members supporting the warring rival generals.
The secretary-general said peace is possible in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan if council members unite and follow the UN Charter and international law.
“A divided council cannot,” he said. “It is imperative that council members spare no effort to work together to find common ground” as it has done overseeing 11 peacekeeping operations on three continents and authorising humanitarian aid to global hotspots.
Slovenia, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, chose the topic, “Leadership for Peace” for its signature event during the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly – and invited leaders from the 15 council nations to attend.
The advance speakers list has five presidents and prime ministers, six foreign ministers, a deputy foreign minister, a vice foreign minister, the US ambassador, who is also listed as a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, and a Russian representative.
At the same time as the council was meeting, Biden was appearing on “The View”, a popular daytime talk show, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s schedule said he was scheduled to attend a meeting of the Group of 20 major economic powers soon after.
Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which works in the world’s crisis areas, called for a renewed respect for international humanitarian law. “Wars can be fought and won while adhering to the letter and the spirit of the law,” she told the council.
Spoljaric said the Red Cross today sees warring parties overlooking their international humanitarian law obligations “to justify violations, destruction and impediments to humanitarian action”.
Liberia’s former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, now a member of The Elders group of former global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, was equally gloomy.
“Preserving peace should be the primary responsibility of any leader. Yet the leadership for peace that the world desperately needs is sorely lacking today,” she said.
The Elders are calling for action on three issues: Leaders must uphold international law. Conflict resolution and peace-building must be “truly inclusive”. And the Security Council, “widely seen to be ineffective”, must be reformed to tackle challenges of the world of 2025 and beyond, and not remain “a relic of 1945”, when the United Nations was established.
On a more positive note, all 15 members of the council approved a presidential statement — a step below a legally binding resolution — that reaffirms the principles of the UN Charter and recognizes the need for universal adherence to obligations in international law and council resolutions.
In the statement, the council underscored “the importance of upholding multilateralism” — the foundation of the UN where all nations work together. And it recognised “that the spirit that guided the creation of the United Nations should prevail and inspire mankind to persist on the path of peace”.
But despite council members’ agreement to the lofty language in the statement, their deep divisions were clearly evident at Wednesday’s meeting.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in his first appearance at the UN, recognised the divide, calling for a renewal of the international consensus on delivering humanitarian support. “This should be a bare minimum, yet too often, we’re falling short,” he said.
He also called for an end to fighting in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan and accountability for those violating the UN Charter, saying Russia carried out “the greatest violation of the Charter in a generation” by invading Ukraine.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the council must be guided by the UN Charter, and called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a direct attack on the Charter’s foundational values.
“Since launching its full-scale invasion, Russia has committed atrocity after atrocity,” she said. “President (Vladimir) Putin remains hell-bent on redrawing the borders of a sovereign country by force. But the Ukrainian people have not relented. They have stood strong.”
On the other side, Russia’s deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the council that “most probably not since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 has our planet been so close to a global conflict as today”.
He claimed the world has ended up in such a dangerous situation because the US and its allies are striving to maintain their dominance in the world through NATO and the European Union — and they are dragging themselves “into war with Russia in order to keep afloat the anti-Russia project in Ukraine”.
Polyansky claimed Russia’s military action in Ukraine complies with the UN Charter, claiming it is in self-defense and that its forces are winning.
US deputy ambassador Robert Wood countered that Russia’s war of aggression “will fail, Ukraine will prevail, and Russia just needs to end this destabilising rhetoric and nuclear saber-rattling”.
