IN about seven months, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will hold its 79th session. Expect it to be the talking shop it has always been.
If William Shakespeare was alive today, he would likely describe it thus: UNGA's a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
If it was a human of 78 going on to be 79, it would have been a wasted life. Unkind, but true. Consider the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Though the SDGs were adopted in 2016, seven years later, when 193 nations of the world gathered at the 78th session of the UNGA, only a meagre 15 per cent of the goals had been met.
Eighty-five per cent by 2030, the SDGs deadline, must be a great expectation for UNGA. Ditto climate change. Ditto the scourge of war.
The Middle East has been a battlefield for the longest time. Since Oct 7, Israel has been engaged in the bloodiest of them all, killing more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children and babies.
Gideon Levy, a prominent Israeli journalist, writing an op-ed in Haaretz, counted 260 names of newborns among the dead. Age zero. Horror of this scale has no explanation, says Levy. Yet, UNGA is unable to summon the political will to end the genocide there. Dare nations disturb this universe?
They must. But before that, a burning question: if UNGA is just a talking shop, why attend?
As one journalist put it, it is the only show in town with guaranteed access to a worldwide audience. Sad, but true. Small and middle powers need the podium presence in New York to show to the world that they have not ceased to fight for a more just world despite the UN Security Council standing in the way.
They can't fight the powerful states of the UNSC for sure, but at least they can tell on them while the world is listening. We are proud that Malaysia has been doing that for the longest time. There are many things wrong with the world order that gives the UNSC control of the rest.
We will focus on one: international law. Instead of being a tool to do justice, it has become what legal scholar and author Martti Koskenniemi calls "a manipulable facade for state interests". If it is in a state's interest that one race must be persecuted by another, then a law would be interpreted to allow just that. International law demands an evaluation of the worth of conflicting interests, not a manipulation of them.
So how do you disturb this UN universe to save humanity? If you are an optimist like law professor Richard Falk, you will wait forever for the UNSC to cede some of its powers to the UNGA.
This will not happen. Neither can reform of the UNSC be forced upon the present member states. It just takes one UNSC member to not ratify the amended UN Charter to stop the reform from happening.
The alternative is to have "little UNSCs" like BRICS, an alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. The message being: be the change we want you to be or be changed.