With the Ukraine war still ongoing after four years and unpredictable turmoil being unleashed in the Middle East, a strong and effective United Nations is needed more than ever. Global Insight assesses the challenges, including the chaos of the Trump administration and the so-called ‘Board of Peace’.

After the devastation of the Second World War, countries came together to create an organisation that worked to avoid anything on such a scale happening again for over eight decades. But, as the UN prepares to elect its new Secretary-General, to replace António Guterres, it’s in serious crisis. Three of its most powerful members are acting in contravention of one of its founding principles: the prohibition on the use of force.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s occupation and militarisation in the South China Sea and the seizure by the US of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as well as the bombings in Iran last summer and again now, with Israel − all these actions are violations of the UN Charter, committed by some of the most powerful countries in the world.

Where the US was once seen as the world’s ‘guardian of peace’, it is unwilling under the Trump administration to fulfil this role any longer. In fact, US President Donald Trump has threatened NATO ally Greenland with invasion and other NATO allies with tariffs, if they didn’t support him. And with the strikes on Iran, a regional conflict in the Middle East has been unleashed.

‘There’s no doubt that the United Nations is going through its biggest crisis, at least since the end of the Cold War, possibly even since its foundation,’ says Richard Gowan, who was UN Director at International Crisis Group from 2019 to 2025, and now leads the group’s Global Issues and Institutions programme.

A paralysed Security Council

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 and the stalemate in the UN Security Council because of a Russian veto, countries came together and, within a week, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution deploring the act of ‘aggression’ committed against Ukraine. Another resolution called for humanitarian access to address the ‘dire’ situation in Ukraine resulting from the hostilities and demanded that Russian troops withdrew ‘immediately, completely and unconditionally’. A further vote saw Russia suspended from the Human Rights Council.

The General Assembly was able to play this larger role though the so-called ‘veto initiative’, which was called into action in the same year amid growing frustration about the inability of the Security Council to address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, because of the Russian veto. Under the initiative, when a resolution is vetoed in the Security Council it is automatically referred to the General Assembly and discussed within ten days. The initiative has been used when resolutions on North Korea, Ukraine and Syria were vetoed by China or Russia.

‘I think it is very clear that a lot of governments around the world no longer believe that they can put their faith in international law and international institutions. What we’re seeing at the moment is a scramble for security worldwide as states are suddenly spending a huge amount of money on defence. They’re reducing the amount of money they spend on development and diplomacy. There’s a real sense out there that what counts in this disorderly world is hard power,’ says Gowan. ‘Simultaneously, there is just a real absence of trust in bodies like the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council. That’s been true for a while, but obviously it’s exacerbated by the fact that the US, basically the founder and the guarantor of the existing international system, also seems to be checking out.’

Europe’s coalescence

There is a real difference in the response of European governments to the first and second Trump administrations. Early in his first term European countries ‘doubled down on their investments in multilateralism,’ says Gowan. Initiated by France and Germany, they even set up the Alliance for Multilateralism in 2019, as a way to deepen that commitment. During President Trump’s current term, however, their focus lies elsewhere.

‘This time around, it is very different indeed. European diplomats around the United Nations say that they regret, and actually their capitals regret, the fact that the UN order seems to be fragmenting. But for policymakers back home, in European capitals, the state of the UN system is not really in their top 20 or 30 concerns. What they’ve been worried about is tariffs, the future of NATO, Russia. That is where all the energy is going,’ says Gowan.

As a result, they are not looking to replace the funds that the US is no longer spending on the UN or to call out the US at the Security Council over its actions in Venezuela and Iran. This contrasts with the way European states came together after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and when President Trump threatened Greenland – both situations that affected the continent directly.

Federica D’Alessandra is Co-Chair of the IBA Rule of Law Forum and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. ‘The measures taken regionally within Europe to confront Russia’s aggression, including and perhaps especially accountability measures, demonstrate how an affected region coalescing together can indeed successfully mobilise to confront international aggression,’ she says, ‘even when it is committed by a military and geopolitical heavyweight espousing revanchist ideologies at their doorstep. In doing so, Europeans have set the important precedent that they can, and likely will, make threats to their regional peace and security costly endeavours.’

An end of hegemony

At Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, in no uncertain terms, that he believes the time of US hegemony is over. He spoke of a ‘rupture’ in the world order. These cracks have been visible for decades, says Elsa Wyllie, an officer of the IBA War Crimes Committee. ‘You could trace them as far back as the international community’s failure to act on Rwanda and Srebrenica in the mid-1990s, which revealed that the rules-based order was selectively enforced depending on political convenience,’ she says. ‘But the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the canary in the coal mine. It demonstrated that even the order’s principal guarantor was willing to act outside it when it suited its interests. At that point, it was no longer tenable to treat the United States as a reliable anchor for the system,’ says Wyllie, who is also an international human rights and criminal defence lawyer with Arendt Chambers in Vancouver.

But does a change in the post-war world order also mean an end to the post-war international legal order? ‘It’s clear that we’re in the middle of something dramatic happening in the international order. We have three UN Security Council members now acting in contravention of the UN Charter. In light of all this, it is hard to say that the post-war legal order, which is grounded in the prohibition on use of force, is alive and well,’ says Hathaway.

While some countries have called out the US on the illegality of the strikes in Venezuela and Iran, many find themselves in a difficult situation. Defending well-known human rights violators like Maduro and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is problematic. ‘But the effect of that failure is an erosion of these norms and perhaps even the complete destruction of them. It’s hard to see how the international system recovers from this,’ says Hathaway.

Meanwhile, the world seems to be moving in a direction whereby the ideological belief that ‘might is right’ prevails. ‘International law hasn’t disappeared, but it’s under real strain,’ says Wyllie. ‘Its legitimacy is eroding as egregious breaches go unanswered and exceptions harden into precedent, namely, binding for the weak, discretionary for the strong. The way forward is to rebuild legitimacy through shared responsibility and real collective capacity, so that law can once again function as a constraint and an opportunity, rather than an afterthought.’

While the current crisis shows us the need for change, it also makes apparent how well the UN system has managed to maintain an unprecedented peace and security for such a long time. ‘We tend to notice international law when it fails and ignore it when it’s succeeding. We don't notice the fact that most states are not invading their neighbours. Most states are not using force outside their borders in violation of the charter. Most states are abiding by the rules of the system and have been for the last eight decades. And in a way, what this is showing us in the violation that’s taking place is how much compliance with the system there has been to date,’ says Hathaway.

During an illustrious career working at the highest levels of international affairs, David Scheffer served as the senior advisor to Madeleine Albright when she was US ambassador to the United Nations. He’s recently published a book, co-authored with IBA Executive Director, Mark Ellis, titled The UN Charter: Five Pillars for Humankind. He is fully aware of the major challenges facing the UN and clear about what needs to happen so that it retains its essential role. ‘UN agencies have always been and will remain on the frontlines of the most challenging and dangerous humanitarian crises arising from war, economic and healthcare disruptions, and migrations,’ he says. ‘Sovereign governments have the capacity to demonstrate their support for an effective United Nations, and should exercise the political will to do so.’

Ellis says that only by combining structural change with the safeguarding of its founding principles – which, he believes, remain essential – can the UN Charter continue to serve as a credible foundation for international order. ‘The permanent members themselves have been among the principal sources of instability,’ he says. ‘After eight decades, reform is clearly needed. A more equitable distribution of voting power must emerge. However, the Charter’s normative architecture – its commitment to sovereignty, human rights and the prohibition of aggressive war – must be preserved.’

The ‘Board of Peace’

Amid these ongoing conversations about reform and changes in the world order, President Trump has created what some view as his own alternative to the UN, the so-called ‘Board of Peace’. The creation of the body was, however, approved by the Security Council to oversee the Gaza peace plan. However, it has become clear that President Trump has created an international body with no mention of Gaza in its charter and with himself at the helm, for life. Over 20 countries have signed up and are expected to pay a billion dollars to remain members after an initial three-year period.

It remains to be seen whether the ‘Board of Peace’ will do for Gaza what the Security Council wasn’t able to achieve. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely that this particular institution is going to act in a way that is going to address problems that couldn’t be addressed by the UN Security Council. And if it authorises a use of force that couldn’t be authorised by the Security Council, that creates real tension with the UN and potentially even violates the UN Charter, depending on what the authorisation might be,’ says Hathaway.

Various Arab states – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, as well as Turkey – have joined the ‘Board of Peace’, mainly because they don’t want any decisions on Gaza made without them. Some of those countries are involved in other conflicts that the UN has not been able to resolve, like those in Yemen and Sudan. This could create some ‘interesting possibilities for discussions’, says Gowan of the International Crisis Group.

Yet the same doesn’t apply for conflicts that involve Russia or China, since they both declined their invitations. It seems unlikely that either country will engage with the ‘Board of Peace’ on any of the conflicts they are involved in, since – unlike in the Security Council where they also have a veto – here only President Trump has one.

While the ‘Board of Peace’ has been mocked and was at least initially not taken seriously, it does dominate many a conversation at the UN, according to Gowan. ‘The political signal that the US has sent by launching this body is unnerving for UN officials and diplomats at the UN. What is telling about this, is that the level of confidence within the UN system is so low that even something pretty silly like the “Board of Peace” actually does feel like a real challenge to the existing institution,’ he says.

Attention deficit

The ‘Board of Peace’, the arrest of Maduro, the bombing of Iran and the wider conversation about the state of the international order have dominated news headlines. This has taken attention from major conflicts, like Ukraine and Gaza. ‘One of the many tragedies of the current situation is that it is taking everybody’s attention away from the horrors that continue to unfold in Gaza and the West Bank,’ says Hathaway. ‘It requires major international diplomacy to try to find a way forward to deal with this problem. It’s a real tragedy [that] instead of really trying to come up with a serious solution to a problem that has plagued the world for decades, that we’re in the midst of another regional war in the Middle East that doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon.’

Even less attention goes to other conflicts that are less strategically significant, and struggle to make headlines even on quieter days. The consequences for people living through those conflicts might be disastrous. ‘There have always been forgotten conflicts,’ says Gowan. ‘There have always been really vicious situations that do not get top-level attention. But in this period, these cases are going to get even less focus. And that’s at the same time as humanitarian agencies – which have often sort of provided a safety net for some of the people trapped in forgotten conflicts – are struggling to do so because they just don't have the money. I think there are going to be some really dark cases where so-called minor conflicts actually cause a huge amount of suffering, and that they’re just off the radar.’

Whether the ‘Board of Peace’ will be able to play any role in addressing any of these conflicts remains to be seen. ‘There is a growing tendency to treat conflicts as transactions to be closed rather than as human rights crises demanding accountability,’ says Wyllie. ‘The ‘Board of Peace’ is symptomatic of that approach. What is needed is not more transactional brokering, but a coalition of states genuinely committed to the rules-based order, willing to enforce the norms that already exist and to hold violators accountable.’

A new Secretary-General

Soon, Guterres will be stepping down from his role as UN Secretary-General, leaving the institution at a time when it is in genuine crisis. Who might take on the role and who might be able to reform the UN so that it can maintain its relevance, effectively confronting the major issues facing the world today?

‘Historically, there have been Secretaries-General like Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant, who stepped in during the Cold War and managed to establish themselves as international mediators and peacemakers, even capable of facilitating contacts between the superpowers in the fifties and sixties,’ says Gowan. ‘I hear from a lot of diplomats from various regions that they would like a UN leader who attempted to play that mediating role again. It will be interesting to see if the next UN top official can at least put a few ideas on the table, can at least get the organisation back in the game in some conflicts where at the moment it’s really just on the margins or playing a limited humanitarian role.’

While the role matters, Wyllie thinks what is more important is what states and international lawyers must demand in terms of reforms. ‘The Security Council is failing to respond to flagrant breaches of erga omnes obligations, duties owed to the international community as a whole,’ says Wyllie. ‘Whether through veto abuse or political paralysis, that dysfunction must be addressed. Concrete reform – constraining the veto in cases of mass atrocity, strengthening compliance with ICJ advisory opinions, building enforcement coalitions outside the Council when the Council is deadlocked – is the work that falls to the middle powers. The Secretary-General can facilitate that work, but the political will must come from states prepared to act.’

Yola Verbruggen is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at yolav@protonmail.com