Isn’t It Time to Disband the United Nations?

Six months from now, the United Nations will mark 80 years since its founding. If you still believe that this body upholds the ideals on which it was created, or if you cannot fathom how the United Nations no longer deserves to be acclaimed as the premier global body defending the ‘human rights’ of all,  here are a few interviews that might bring this matter into clearer focus.

Let me just state the obvious (to those who already know): Crime and corruption are the only ‘ideals’ that underpin the workings of today’s UN. Even though I’m a trained lawyer, with experience in human rights and international law (Council of Europe) please don’t take my word for it.

Here is Columbia University professor and activist Shai Davidai engaging with the UN’s “Most Hated Man” aka Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, a watchdog established in 1993 with a specific mandate to keep the global institution in check, monitor its activities and critique its practices and resolutions.

If you were stunned, as I once was, by how the UN and its agencies churn out dozens of anti-Israel resolutions while dictatorial or extremist Islamic states, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, China, North Korea and Turkey have a clean slate; if you wonder how tyrannical nations like Iran and China – legendary for the brutal treatment of their people – can possibly helm any UN’s human rights council; or how on earth Saudi Arabia could have been appointed to head its Women’s Rights Commission in 2025, here’s the reaction from Neuer, a close observer and critic of the UN for two decades: “Electing Saudi Arabia to head the world body for protecting women’s rights is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.” Human Rights’ has become nothing more than a loose term (or brand) that the UN has diluted of all meaning and value; at the UN, as at many other NGOs, ‘human rights’ have been replaced with anything but; geopolitical interests, vote-trading and, ultimately, money.

It’s fair, of course, to hear from the UN. So if you want to hear it straight from an insider, watch Ali Tabrizi’s riveting interview with Emma Reilly, a former UN employee, and whistleblower. Here, Reilly describes in great detail the level of rot that has affected all levels of the UN; from peacekeepers and other staff engaged in rape and pedophilia overseas (detailed in another Tabrizi interview) to a widely acknowledged dismissal of, and total lack of concern, for the actual protection of ‘human rights.’

If you’re unclear on the meaning of an actual genocide, a term coined by Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1943, hear Reilly recount how the Uyghur ethnic group, a Muslim minority in Xinjiang China have been targeted, imprisoned en masse, tortured and murdered by Chinese authorities as I write this – and how (and why) the majority of the UN’s member states remain silent about these ongoing crimes against humanity, while perpetually, solely and almost ritualistically honing in on Israel and its defensive (albeit problematic) war (not a genocide) against Hamas in Gaza. One could say the same about the genocide committed by the Assad regime against its citizens, much as the Iranian ayatollahs have ordered the lynching, torture and disappearances of its people.

All you need to do is watch the workings of the Human Rights Council for yourself: As just one example, if a UN Watch ally (say a pro-Israel activist) is invited to address the Council as an interlocutor, and if she should state objective, reported and incontrovertible truths regarding Israel while also speaking about the brutal treatment of citizens in one of the fundamentalist Islamic states, she will be abruptly cut off by the facilitator and reprimanded for sullying the reputation of said regime by i.e. speaking in ‘a disrespectful or intolerant’ manner. If it wasn’t such a despicable act of betrayal of all that the UN founding fathers sought to achieve, I would find it comical.

The UN was founded in October 1945, for the specific purpose of ensuring that human beings would never again be at risk of the greatest harms that had been exacted on the most vulnerable populations during two world wars.

But let’s face it. Eighty years later, the UN has proven itself to be a grossly ineffective arbiter and mechanism for keeping the peace and protecting human rights. It has repeatedly and blatantly lauded the voices of Islamists, their allies, and the “State of Palestine” while excoriating Israeli and stances supporting Zionism. From the OHCHR’s director Volker Turk, to the so-called Special Rapporteur on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” Francesca Albanese, from Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres to his possible replacement, Chilean diplomat and UN Women’s first director, Michelle Bachelet, these ideologically and/or financially warped personalities predictably join the chorus of anti-Israel, antisemitic stakeholders.

How laughable that the UN has the audacity to claim that it is “still working to maintain peace and security, give humanitarian assistance to those in need, protect human rights, and uphold international law” but does none of the above, instead supporting tyrannical regimes around the world via the workings of this massive behemoth. Given its extensive history of activities and statements to the contrary, its presence on the world stage should be downgraded and, hopefully, phased out.

If the unimaginable horrors of World War II provided the impetus for setting up the United Nations, may the end of the current calamities, when and if they should come – between Russian and Ukraine, and between Israel and Hamas – herald the cautious founding of a new global collective with clearly-devised mechanisms for transparency, accountability, and enforcement, and a stated mission to improve on the abject and avoidable failings of the UN.