As U.N. Turns 75, the Celebration Is Muted by Calamity and Conflict - The New York Times

Worldwide contagion, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a warming planet — not to mention rising hunger, growing legions of refugees, xenophobic bombast from strongmen leaders and a new cold war between the United States and China.

The United Nations is about to celebrate its birth in 1945 from the ruins of World War II, though “celebrate” might seem an odd choice of word amid the long list of current global woes and the organization’s own challenges.

high commissioner for human rights and the first woman to become president of Ireland.

The United Nations, which has grown from 50 members 75 years ago to 193 members and a global staff of 44,000, was intended at its inception to provide a forum in which countries large and small believed they had a meaningful voice.

But its basic structure gives little real power to the main body, the General Assembly, and the most to the World War II victors — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — with each wielding a veto on the 15-seat Security Council as permanent members.

The outcome is chronic Security Council deadlocks on many issues, often pitting the United States against not only China and Russia but also against American allies.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has called the U.N.’s Human Rights Council a “communist meeting place.” Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has railed against U.N.

human rights inquiry into his war on drugs.

Trump’s “America First” approach, the United States intends to withdraw from the World Health Organization, with the American president criticizing its coronavirus response and calling it a mouthpiece for China.

agencies, including the United Nations Population Fund, the Human Rights Council and the agency that aids Palestinians classified as refugees.

sanctions against Iran have set up a new clash in the Security Council.

While the United States has been lashing out, China has maneuvered to assert more control at the United Nations, taking leadership positions in agencies that include the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the International Telecommunications Union and the Human Rights Council.

A May 2019 study, “People’s Republic of the United Nations,” by the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan research group, suggested China’s U.N.

actions were part of its effort to redefine how such institutions are run, shifting away from Western concepts of democracy and human rights.

reach extended deeper this year when Chinese candidates were chosen, over American opposition, to lead the Food and Agriculture Organization, to join a panel that chooses investigators for the Human Rights Council, and to become a judge on a U.N.-affiliated tribunal that adjudicates Law of the Sea disputes.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, has insisted she is confronting the Chinese — telling a Fox News interviewer last month, for example, that she raises human rights issues in China “at every opportunity we have in the Security Council.”.

Trump’s isolationist behavior has hurt American influence at the United Nations, even as the United States remains vital as the host country and biggest single contributor

“If the United States pulls its cards out of the game, that leaves more scope for China,” said Edward Mortimer, who was the chief speechwriter for former Secretary General Kofi Annan

Guterres, ordinarily careful to avoid offending member states, has described the relationship between the United States and China as dysfunctional and said their rivalry risks splitting the world into “two blocs.”

“Just imagine if we couldn’t raise Kashmir in the Security Council