UNITED Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the Security Council is an “outdated,” “unfair” and “ineffective system” whose failure to put an end to Israel’s war on Gaza has damaged the credibility of the organisation as a whole.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic in an exclusive interview, the UN chief decried the failures of the council, which was established in the aftermath of World War II to ensure international peace and security but whose permanent members’ veto power has consistently proven to be an obstacle to that goal.
The council, Guterres said, “doesn’t correspond to the world of today”.
“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today: Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine.”
Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal who has helmed the UN since 2017, stressed that the organisation’s other bodies and particularly its humanitarian agencies have continued to deliver essential services to Palestinians throughout Israel’s more than 11-month assault on Gaza. But he noted that the council’s political failure to bring an end to the conflict has hurt the UN’s other bodies.
“The UN is not the Security Council,” Guterres said. But he acknowledged that UN staff in the field — and particularly those from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza — “suffer from the fact that the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”
“For us, this failure of the Security Council is a severe handicap for our work in the field,” he added.
Guterres nodded to the 200 UNRWA staff killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the beginning of the war and pointed to a recent survey showing recognition for the agency’s efforts among the Palestinians it is reaching.
He also expressed relief that after the agency came under attack early this year when Israel accused members of its staff of links to “terrorism“, leading several countries to withhold funding, the agency’s credibility appeared to have been restored.
“Many countries that in the beginning hesitated and suspended the support to UNRWA have come back, helping UNRWA deliver,” he said. “UNRWA remains the backbone of humanitarian support to the people of Gaza.”
Still, he condemned the constant challenges Israel continues to pose to that work.
“When conditions are made for them to work, like in relation to polio, they immediately are very effective,” Guterres said. “If the same conditions would be given to our support in relation to all other aspects of humanitarian action, if we hadn’t had the obstacles, the harassment, the problems, the difficulties that Israel has been systematically creating to the acts of UN humanitarian agencies, in particular to UNRWA, we’ll be able to do much more. And the people do need much more.”
