By Professor Sally Totman (pictured, inset) Head of the Charles Sturt School of Social Work and Arts.

United Nations Day on Tuesday 24 October marks the 78th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations Charter, which came into effect in 1945.

The United Nations (UN) was formed in the aftermath of the World War II with the noble goal of preventing future world wars and as the successor to the League of Nations, which had failed to do just that.

Importantly, when establishing the UN, it was decided the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC)  ̶  China, France, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Soviet Union (now Russia)  ̶  would have the power to veto any resolution they did not want to be passed.

This veto power meant that for much of the first 45 years of its existence, the UN was rendered impotent by the bi-polar power dynamics of the Cold War.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, there was renewed hope the UN would finally be able to play the role for which it was created.

In 1990, US President George HW Bush spoke of a New World Order in which he envisioned a move to “an historic period of cooperation” across the globe.

The first test for the UN in this new unipolar world was the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. The UN mobilised in an unprecedent show of unity. The UN authorised US-led coalition launched a successful air campaign that quickly drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

This was followed by a short -  100 hours -  ground war after which President George H. W. Bush announced the end to military operations and claimed it as a “victory for the United Nations”.

There were some who questioned the idea of the UN launching a war to bring about peace and those who felt the UN military coalition had engaged in war-crimes along the so-called Highway of Death.

Sadly, the damage the UN was to wreak in Iraq was just beginning. UN Security Council Resolution 661 placed sanctions on Iraq four days after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

These sanctions were the most severe ever imposed by the UN. They isolated Iraq diplomatically, economically, and even physically. They also forbid ANY dual-use technology to be sold to Iraq. These sanctions remained in place after the liberation of Kuwait.

As a result, what before the war was one of the most advanced countries in the Arab world - with a comprehensive health care system, universal education, minimum wages and even a pension system (a country which was really becoming a middle-class country despite its savage government) - became a country teetering on the brink of collapse.

Its currency collapsed; its middle-class was destroyed; infant mortality skyrocketed; drinking water was polluted; malnutrition was rife; hospitals could not cope; essential machinery could not be serviced or repaired. The impact of the sanctions was so catastrophic that UN bodies themselves, such as UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Food Programme (WFP) pointed to the terrible human costs:

‘4,500 children under the age of 5 are dying each month from hunger and disease’

‘More than one million Iraqis have died - 567,000 of them children - as a direct consequence of economic sanctions’

‘Alarming food shortages are causing irreparable damage to an entire generation of Iraqi children’

To diffuse the mounting criticism of the sanctions regime, in 1995 the UN General Assembly (UNGA) established the Oil-for-Food program through UNGA 986. This allowed Iraq to sell oil and the proceeds would go to a locked UN account, and a proportion would go to Iraq to buy food and the rest would pay reparations and for other activities such as the work of UNSCOM.

The program suffered from widespread corruption and abuse and was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials, a criticism which turned out to be wholly accurate.

It was only the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam Hussein that led to the end of these UN sanctions. A war which ironically, thanks to the US veto, the UN was unable to prevent from happening.

Since the inception of the UN in 1945, the five permanent members of the Security Council have collectively exercised the veto 312 times (as of Sunday 22 October 2023), the majority by the USSR/Russia, followed by the US and China. The most recent use was on Wednesday 18 October 2023 when the US vetoed a resolution related to the current situation in Israel and Gaza.

Interestingly, one of the earliest actions of the newly-formed UN was UNGA 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas.

It was this decision that laid the foundation for the 75 years of war, terrorism and misery that has ensued. It has also been the conflict where the UN has been the most ineffectual because of the Security Council veto power.

For many people, the UN is most closely associated with humanitarian workers delivering much-needed aid to those in war-torn or environmentally stricken nations; helping refugees, advocating for action on climate change, and providing help to communities around the world in need.

There are more than 30 UN Funds and Programs and these agencies do outstanding work in often very difficult circumstances and should be supported and celebrated. Sadly, they too are hampered by an ineffectual UN parent body.

After 78 years of ineffectual governance at best, and complicit negligence at worst, it is time to re-assess the structure of the UN Security Council and, in particular, the veto power that is held by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, if we really want to see the UN achieve the purpose for which it was established.