Rule of law in the time of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu
As the UN turns 80, Global Insight assesses the challenges it faces in upholding the rule of law despite growing US disengagement and the rise of authoritarian regimes.
Five years ago, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres famously remarked that avoiding a third world war was the single greatest achievement in the UN’s 75-year history. In the wake of the Second World War, the UN Charter confirmed a seemingly unwavering global commitment to uphold human rights, peace and security. Today, the multilateral body too often appears paralysed by tensions between the Security Council’s (UNSC) five permanent members (P5), leaving it watching on as these principles are trampled during major conflicts in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha used the Charter’s anniversary on 26 June to reiterate calls for the UN’s reform, starting with limiting ‘the veto right in cases of aggression, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.’ He added, ‘Ukraine’s border is the border of international law. The Charter is not failing. It is being betrayed. Right now, it is being betrayed by Russia – a country that illegally holds the permanent UNSC seat and whose actions fully contradict the very criteria for the UN membership.’
On 9 September, the UN General Assembly opened its 80th session in New York. Just two days earlier, on 7 September, Russia launched its largest aerial assault on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, damaging Ukraine's main government building in Kyiv for the first time, leaving four dead and 44 injured across the country. The attack followed failed efforts by the US and Russia to secure a peace deal during a summit in Alaska in August.
There are still almost 70,000 peacekeeping personnel worldwide, The Council is still managing a dozen or more sanctions regimes, including sanctions on al-Qaeda and the Taliban
Richard Gowan
UN Director, International Crisis Group
The UN said it was working with humanitarian partners to provide urgent support in Kyiv in the wake of the attack, but the multilateral body is facing a liquidity crisis that’s eroding its ability to provide humanitarian assistance when and where it is needed most.
Freedom isn’t free
In theory, the US and China – historically the UN’s highest donors – contribute over 40 per cent of the UN’s regular budget and nearly 50 per cent of its peacekeeping budget. The Trump administration has made 83 per cent cuts to US Agency for International Development (USAID), having already accumulated arrears of approximately $1.5bn and $1.2bn to the regular and peacekeeping budgets, respectively. As of 9 May, China was in arrears totalling $587m for peacekeeping operations for the 2025 fiscal year.
The USAID cuts have had a significant impact on the global aid system, while funding is also expected to be slashed from other UN agencies such as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), an agency that promotes family planning and sexual and reproductive health.
In March, Guterres unveiled his UN80 Initiative which aims to streamline and rethink the UN’s operations to make it ‘fit for purpose’. Although the title gave a nod to the Charter’s anniversary, for many the bold and radical reform programme was an attempt to respond to the US administration’s apparent unwillingness to provide the necessary funds.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said it would review its relationship with the UN and other multilateral agencies and publish a report on its findings in August. The report has not been forthcoming, but the writing is on the wall. On 28 August, the administration said it would not participate in the upcoming Universal Periodic Review process – a peer review of the human rights records of all 193 UN member states that takes place every five years – marking the first time the US has boycotted the process.
Jamil Dakwar, Director of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, decried the move as ‘a chilling attempt to evade accountability’ and warned it would set ‘a terrible precedent that would only embolden dictators and autocrats and dangerously weaken respect for human rights at home and abroad.’
A day later, President Trump pledged to trigger a ‘pocket rescission’ by unilaterally cancelling $4.9bn in foreign aid that had already been earmarked by Congress to fund at least 15 international programmes. A federal judge has already ruled the action illegal, adding to the growing list of domestic legal challenges to executive orders and other actions taken by President Trump since he took office in January.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, 8 July 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Richard Gowan, Director of UN and Multilateral Diplomacy at the International Crisis Group in New York, says the ‘massive US shock effect’ of the cuts is already being felt across the humanitarian agencies. However, he believes there’s still uncertainty surrounding the US approach to UN funding. ‘There's an implication that eventually US money will come through and that some of the US announcements of cutting off all funding are really negotiating tactics,’ he says.
In early September, the White House quietly dropped the World Trade Organisation (WTO) from a list of foreign aid programmes in line for cuts – confirming the view that the US position is far from decided.
Gowan also points to comments by Mike Waltz, Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the UN during a Senate confirmation hearing in July, where he criticised the organisation as being overly politicised, bloated and inefficient and said many peacekeeping missions had become costly, ‘nation-building’ exercises. ‘But when he talks about peacekeeping, he’s not actually talking about zeroing out all support for peacekeeping,’ says Gowan. ‘He's saying that peacekeeping operations should be more efficient and should be more accountable.’
Reform and resistance
As the UN has expanded to contend with the growing number of conflicts, humanitarian crises and inequalities worldwide, the argument for making the UN programmes more efficient is not new.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump walk on the tarmac after they arrived to attend a meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, US, 15 August 2025. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS
Angela Kane knows this all too well, having served as Under-Secretary-General for Management for four years before being appointed UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs in 2012, occupying this role until 2015.
There is considerable scope to streamline certain processes, she says, including around recruitment and redeployment of staff on overseas peacekeeping missions, but fears much of the critical rhetoric from the US and other quarters fails to grasp the complexity of the UN system. ‘I think we have to be very clear that in some specialised programmes and funds it's a much leaner organisation, whereas the UN has 193 members, so that's a very different, very unwieldy kind of thing,’ she says.
Although Member States have been largely supportive of the proposed reforms outlined in the UN80 initiative, in July the UN Office in Geneva Staff Union voted for a motion of no confidence in the Guterres and Undersecretary-General Guy Ryder, citing concerns over job security, transparency, consultation and the organisation’s future direction.
The Union’s memo also criticised the UN’s top-heavy structure, noting that the majority of job cuts are expected at junior levels, with no reductions at the Under-Secretaries-General level. There are some concerns that opposition from the staff union could create procedural hurdles to Guterres’ potential cuts and reforms.
For some, like Kane, the motion – which comes as Guterres prepares to hand over the reins in 2026 – highlights the organisation’s increasing fragility.
‘Everyone wants to come in with a new agenda, but if you do this one year before you leave, that's dead in the water, because that next year is already overshadowed by the campaigns, the election and the presentations being held for their successor,’ she says. ‘He’s cutting posts and saying no more travel, but there’s no vision behind it. That is perceived as a sign of weakness, particularly on the part of the organisation and its staff members who have signed this no confidence motion.’
The role of member states
Overstretched and facing a gaping funding shortfall, undoubtedly further US cuts would be disastrous for the UN. However, there’s hope the crisis may also galvanise the international community to uphold the UN Charter’s central principles even within the constraints of the existing UN system.
‘The international community will have to make sure they are forging ahead in the mission to reclaim the UN's founding role, which is in preventing and resolving conflict and then reinforcing the international rule of law,’ says Hina Jilani, a leading Pakistani human rights lawyer and Co-Chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).
Despite the P5’s veto power, Jilani believes there’s still an opportunity for other member states to step up. ‘At the moment, what the US is trying to do is undermine global cooperation,’ she says. ‘It is up to the international community collectively to resist these efforts. The Global South and North both now have to consider this and get out of this complex that the UN is undefeatable in diplomatic action.’
There are growing calls by Jilani, Kane and others to place greater weight on the concerns and input of the UN’s wider membership, ensuring the voices of both smaller member states and the UNSC’s non-permanent members – which are elected every two years – are heeded.
Gowan points to the crucial function the elected members have already played with regards to Russia and Ukraine. ‘In the early days of the war the Norwegians had a really big part in ensuring that the Russians didn't veto resolutions on issues like Afghanistan, where there could have been collateral damage for arguments over Ukraine,’ he says. ‘They did a lot behind the scenes and played quite an important role in keeping Council diplomacy going at that time.’
As the world’s gaze shifted to the Gaza crisis, the elected members stepped up again, says Gowan. ‘In 2024 we saw for the first time the elected members as a group table a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, which the UN didn’t block, back in the spring of last year,’ he says.
Although the US has since blocked subsequent calls at the UN for a permanent ceasefire, Gowan believes the efforts of elected members signalled the overwhelming moral imperative within the UN system to stop these wars. ‘They did feel a responsibility to step up in the context of Ukraine and Gaza and do more,’ he says. ‘Now they are more limited with the sort of fear of alienating the current US administration – that’s set that back quite a lot.’
Force for good
As the US adopts an increasingly isolationist ‘Fortress America’ approach to foreign policy, Jonathan Hafetz, an officer of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee, believes the Charter’s anniversary serves as a reminder of the country’s central role in establishing the UN. ‘The Charter was signed in the US and the US was one of the leading countries in setting up and maintaining the UN system, but it is now abandoning it and undermining it in a lot of ways,’ says Hafetz, also a professor at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey. ‘The UN system is certainly flawed for multiple reasons, but hostility towards it is going to lead to a lot of negative effects on humanitarian protections, public health and probably most of all, limitations on the use of force internationally.’
IBA Executive Director Mark Ellis who, together with Ambassador David J Scheffer, recently published a book on the UN Charter, says the anniversary underscores the continuing relevance of the UN’s work today. ‘On the 80th anniversary, we should use this as an opportunity to reflect on what the UN has accomplished and what needs to change for it to be relevant for the next 80 years,’ he says.
We should use this anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on what the UN has accomplished and what needs to change for it to be relevant for the next 80 years
Mark Ellis
Executive Director, International Bar Association
Despite the US’s ongoing efforts to pull away from the UN – and the ongoing challenges this poses to the international community’s ability to respond to humanitarian conflicts and disasters – Ellis is confident the UN system still has the necessary clout to marshal the resources and principal voices to resolve the dizzying array of global challenges it faces – from rising authoritarianism to migration, environmental destruction and ecocide.
‘We are facing a critical crossroads for the international community,’ he says. ‘If I were to look at the spectrum of the success and failures and the challenges the UN has faced all these years, I would still lean towards looking at the successes and recognising that future crises will be better met with a more global approach, not an isolated one.’
Gowan admits the cascade of major crises and wars over the last five years – from Ethiopia and Gaza to Haiti, Myanmar, Sudan and Ukraine – has tested and questioned the UNSC’s ability to respond to so many flashpoints. However, he cautions that there is often too little recognition of what the UN is doing well. ‘There are still almost 70,000 peacekeeping personnel worldwide,’ says Gowan. ‘The Council is still managing a dozen or more sanctions regimes, including sanctions on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which actually pretty much all governments take very seriously. The Council is backstopping humanitarian aid in places like Afghanistan. So, when people say the Council is paralysed, that’s inaccurate. The Council is vastly more active than it was at any point during the Cold War.’
Mark Stephens, Co-Chair of the IBAHRI, believes the UN continues to provide an important role in holding authoritarian regimes to account. He points to a recent statement issued by 11 special rapporteurs and UN experts condemning Iran’s intensifying repression of Iran International journalists worldwide and the growing intimidation of their family members living in Iran, particularly in the aftermath of hostilities with Israel in June 2025.
Rather than thinking that, because certain parts are not working, we reject multilateralism altogether, what we have to do is to make it stronger
Hina Jilani
Co-Chair, IBA’s Human Rights Institute
Stephens, a media law expert at Howard Kennedy in London who has been advising Iran International in the case, says the statement is an example of the UN’s ability to place collective pressure on countries that undermine the rule of law. ‘In the case of authoritarian regimes, global powers often have very little bilateral leverage, making the UN one of the very few tools the international community has at its disposal to manage geopolitical tensions,’ he says. ‘To get an urgent statement out of the UN in August tells you the level of priority that it's been given. […] The UN is one of the last refuges of pressure.’
Jilani has held multiple roles at the UN from her days as a young activist, serving as the first UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, as well as contributing to humanitarian inquiries into the situations in Darfur and Gaza.
She says these experiences demonstrated the UN’s unique ability to bring together civil society and governments to resolve global issues. ‘I know inside and out what the UN’s weaknesses are, but at the same time, I also know this is the best option we have,’ says Jilani. ‘Rather than thinking that, because certain parts are not working, we reject multilateralism altogether, what we have to do is to make it stronger. Where it’s not working, we have to make it work.’
Ruth Green is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at ruthsineadgreen@gmail.com
Header image: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein (Netanyahu); Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS (Trump/Putin)