Mehran Iqbal
2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the United Nation (UN), the global community organization formed in 1945 with the core function is to put collective efforts to prevent future world conflicts. Over the decades, the evolution of international relations, complex trade networks, and proliferations of Weapons (nuclear and conventional) both horizontally and vertically have vastly expanded the UN’s scope and its affiliated institutions.
The today’s world is in new period of turbulence and transformation. While the UN now faces multi-faceted challenges, yet the core role of UN has been the same ‘to maintain the international peace’. For this purpose, UN had played a vital role till date. The UN Charter was designed to prevent the scourge of war and encouraged Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). We saw its value during the Cold War, post-Cold War era and the optimistic early 2000s, when UN resolved a quarter of active conflicts through negotiation.
On contrary, the number of conflicts has doubled in last 15 years and UN’s active involvement has plummeted to 4% from 25%. This raises the question, with evolving global dynamic, is the UN Charter outdated? A deeply examination confirms that the Charter itself is not obsolete. The primary challenge to the UN’s credibility is that its application is often selective rather than universal.
Chapter VI of the Charter offers a wide range of tools: negotiation; inquiry; mediation; and arbitration. These are currently underutilized or politically sidelined. To restore its credibility, the UN must move beyond the superficial mediation of recent times and return to the rigorous, impartial, and consistent application of its founding charter. Mediation must be treated as a specialized tool, protected from the geopolitical interest and politicization.
The UN needs a conscious, active drive to intervene in ongoing conflicts as a peacemaker. Reforms are required at three fronts. First, for too long, the UN has focused on peacekeeping and conflict management i.e. maintaining the fragile truces and ceasefires that stop immediate violence. This has led to a cycle where conflicts frequently relapse within few years. To regain its credibility, the UN must shift it focus towards conflict transformation.
This requires a continuum effort for a longer term that links security with development. The peacebuilding architecture must be utilized to address root causes like poverty, exclusion, and climate change. Second, a critical step in strengthening these tools is ensuring solid resource footing. Currently, the UN has limited its function to the good offices and mediation only, that too are overly reliant on voluntary contributions, which can call the organization’s impartiality into question.
Third and lastly, The UN should embrace voluntary prevention strategies, where nations analyze their own vulnerabilities and seek UN advice within their own sovereignty to de-escalate tension before they turn into armed hostilities in which the international order must be seen to uphold the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of all sates, without exception. Institutionalizing these capacities allow the Department for Political Affairs and Peacebuilding to act as a deployable headquarters, conducting quiet outreach and diplomatic mission wherever they are needed.
In the today’s evolved world UN can no longer act as siloed intellectia, it must function as a network ecosystem. It needs to cooperate with other forces of this ecosystem for better results. Firstly, it needs to move from delivering for youth to delivering with them. Youth are not disengaged, they are frustrated with systems that do not reflect as per their aspirations, and their inclusion in governance is vital for the legitimacy of peace processes.
Secondly, regional organizations like the African Union, ASEAN, SCO etc. are often better place to lead peace operations because they have greater stake in the regional stability and a deeper understanding of local histories. Thirdly, at times political paths are block, there International Humanitarian Law (IHL) serves as a guardrail for humanity. Addressing humanitarian issues such as the exchange of prisoners or Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict etc. can serve as practical entry point for dialogue that build the trust necessary for eventually political settlement
The UN’s credibility rest on the leadership of the secretary-General and the willingness of the member states to support risk taking. History shows that UN developed its most creative innovations, such as peacekeeping, during the height of cold war. Therefore, geopolitics can never be an excuse for inaction.
The secretary general must be empowered to use their good offices even in the most intractable context, as peace mediation in fundamentally about action over planning. These good offices should not be limited to peace keeping only but to the original core mission of UN which is conflict settlement and conflict transformation.
Peace can’t be selective and justice can’t be deferred indefinitely. As the UN enters its ninth decade, it must reimagine its role not just as a manager of crises, but as a courageous advocate for the peaceful settlement of disputes by: ensure consistency; invest in prevention; empower the local; and protect impartiality.
The author is a political and International Relations scholar with over five years of experience in higher education and policy research, served at University of Central Punjab (Lahore), University of Sialkot, and ISSRA-NDU (Islamabad). Focusing on foreign policy, security, and peace and conflict studies. I enjoy translating research into practical insights.
