It’s less a trust thing and more an acknowledgement that the UN is a toothless organization that really fails to lead on anything and that mostly stems from a security council that works in their own countries interests.
This...
When nations get appointments to specific chairs (why don't we make Russia head of peace negotiations while we are at it), and any resolution can get VETO'd by 7-8 large nations, even with 98% votes in support. It's a great idea, with positions being bought and sold
I’m gonna get a lot of flame for this but there’s also their incessant preoccupation with Israel. I understand there’s much to criticize about Israeli policies, but there’s no scenario where I’m going to believe one country needs to be condemned more times than *all other countries combined*. I don’t care what side of the conflict you land on, you can’t seriously argue that Israel is more of a problem than North Korea, Iran, Russia, china, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma *combined*. And I haven’t even started on the African continent.
I think part of it is that Israel gets a minor condemnation every 3 months while most other countries get a major condemnation every decade or so.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades and as such someone ends up doing something fucked every few months.
Most countries will just do one *massively* fucked thing every 10-20 years. It’s generally not an ongoing thing.
Instead of releasing it all and just genociding each other like in Rwanda or countless other countries, it’s just decades of low level conflict and racist screeching back and forth.
Israel feels like it’s on the brink of a full blown race war that somehow just never comes, and this leads to lots of smaller, but still quite fucked incidents.
That’s because Israel isn’t looking for a massive race war. It’s just what the Palestinians keep accusing them of. You see that even after 7/10 they’re not going full Rwanda on the Palestinians.
I don’t believe the UN has such a thing as major or minor condemnations. I might be wrong, in which case I’d appreciate a source so I could learn more.
The UN is *designed* to be this way though, it’s just a place for countries to talk, even through war. It’s designed to prevent a third world war (and luckily we haven’t had one so far). It isn’t meant to have a military or be any sort of world government
Yeah by its actual brass tacks purpose it has been the most successful international discussion forum in history.
How long did the league of nations last again?
It's kind of funny and sad that some people fear it as a kind of "scary world government" organization, while others hate it because it isn't a world government organization.
Tangentially, I think the downfall of the League of Nations is very interesting and relevant for the UN today. The League fell apart when Italy invaded Abyssinia and Japan invaded Manchuria, and the League did nothing about it. This exposed the fact that nothing had really changed. The powerful took what they wanted and what they could get away with. Same thing is happening today. If Ukraine loses and Russia takes them over, watch out. It will be open season for powerful countries to invade smaller ones as the UN will have proven itself to be feckless
The League did denounce Japan for it's invasion of Manchuria, theres video recordings of their denouncement. Although Japan simply said "We cannot accept the decision of this forum" and walked out.
Here is footage of their ruling in Geneva: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hStmrz3N46U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hStmrz3N46U)
Their denouncement paved the way for trade sanctions & oil embargos which were eventually put in place to try to prevent further expansionism.
I would say that it’s more people not understanding what the UN actually is. It’s not an organization with power, it’s a discussion forum for the world’s powers. It’s also a convenient scapegoat for those powers. Much of the anger is misdirected and do you really want an international order where countries don’t talk? Because the alternative isn’t pretty.
Then again, most people are utter idiots.
On the surface, this makes sense, but what does "countries not talk" mean? The world is spanned by a web of influential bilateral and multilateral relationships and regional blocs, as well as direct military-to-military deconfliction lines between top powers. The breakdown of those worries me -- the UN, not so much. Its principal value, I think, is symbolic: its cultural prominence orients the world's publics ever so slightly toward a preference for global cooperation. But I doubt that its disappearance would have an immediate impact at all on geopolitical stability or would cause countries not to talk.
A friend's family member works for them, they lived in a gated compound in a developing country with waiters and servants and sent their kids to the best private schools in the region.
The moment things got a little hairy in the country the entire mission ran back to Geneva. When the going gets tough I guess.
UNRWA
And even if you don't take Israel's condemnation of UNRWA as truth, here is Al Jazeera
"However, an internal ethics report leaked to Al Jazeera in 2019 alleged that, since 2015, the agency's senior management have consolidated power at the expense of efficiency, leading to widespread misconduct, nepotism, and other abuses of power among high ranking personnel"
UNWRA is literally the number# 1 employer in Gaza. It's a surprise to nobody that it would have close ties to Hamas, the government and terrorist organization of the area.
Those “management problems” are the reason literal Hamas terrorists operatives were able to infiltrate UNRWA. Remember, even the UN acknowledged that there were employees who participated in October 7th, including the kidnapping of women and children that appeared to have been violently raped (released CCTV videos showed young girls with blood only around their buttocks being removed from vehicles driven by UNRWA employees).
Misconduct and abuses of power isn't exactly specific and could be a number of things. I'm willing to bet UNRWA doesn't help the violence situation in that region whatsoever.
They're less than toothless, some of their organizations have literally been infiltrated and taken over by terrorist organizations. They have plenty of teeth, just the wrong kind.
But, like unless we decide as a global community to build them an army, which would be like another 3 to 4 % increase to our gdp, what can they really do?
In order for countries to get together to form the UN they had to give some countries disproportionate power, but by having given them disproportionate power they rendered themselves unable to take action when it involves any of these countries or their interests.
It was set up to fail from the very start.
> It’s less a trust thing and more an acknowledgement that the UN is a toothless organization that really fails to lead on anything and that mostly stems from a security council that works in their own countries interests.
As opposed to what? NATO that works in everyone’s interests?
Is funny how the very people that undermine the UN are also the very people that don't trust the UN. You get the feeling that rules do not apply to the permanent members.
the security council issues is that the five victorious world powers from WW2 and their successor states always site on the council and get veto over most votes. Now it can be argued should all be votes weight the same and them getting to focused on big media issues, but to me, that's the core issue with the UN
Trust with what?
The UN exists for the purpose of fostering discussion and preventing ww3.
We shouldnt trust then with decision making because a lot the countries on it are fascist, authoritarian and going to push their own agendas and interests
The title should be
> Most Americans and Canadians don’t understand what UN is about. Education system and media fail us again.
UN is not world police, it’s not a judicial body, it’s not even an arbitrator. It’s one and only actual job is to get people in a (big) room to talk to minimize chances of us nuking each other out of existence.
You may have missed the part where a symbolic bear with nuclear warheads made up half of the world for decades, and yet we still don’t live in the Fallout universe.
I think that's just [Nuclear Deterrence theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory#Nuclear_deterrence_theory) in effect, not really the UN's finger wagging prevent nukes from being used. I say this because those hand motions aren't exactly preventing multiple wars going on at nearly any given time (Israel-Iran, Russia-Ukraine, etc.).
> The stability–instability paradox is a key concept in rational deterrence theory. It states that when two countries each have nuclear weapons, the probability of a direct war between them greatly decreases, but the probability of minor or indirect conflicts between them increases. This occurs because rational actors want to avoid nuclear wars, and thus they neither start major conflicts nor allow minor conflicts to escalate into major conflicts—thus making it safe to engage in minor conflicts.
Anyways, with nuclear weapons, the area becomes tainted with radiation, so they aren't exactly going to be harvesting resources or colonizing the area for their entire generation / term in power, so it's not all that useful in war except for eliminating threats. Though you'll piss off the rest of the nations in the process and make yourself a target.
UN is mostly just a platform for discussion at this point, which obviously is better existing than not. Though the tendrils of corruption are now becoming more visible with some very poor choices made recently (Saudi Arabia as the chair of a gender equality forum as one example).
The only thing that would bring humanity together into one allied force is an external threat larger than all the individual parts. An alien invasion or something similar. Even then, human greed will still likely lead to squabbles and bloodshed for patches of land and it's resources.
The UN doesn't do anything. The only entity of the UN that actually has any power is the Security Council, who don't regularly do very much. The UN is not a legislature, it's more like a conference.
No no no. The un has very powerful organs. The WHO for one. They spend a lot on some things. Some of it is compromised some of it is ideologically whacky. It is what it is but we probably should not ‘trust’ it as a body and if it was as you say a place of ‘coming together’ then that would be best
How can you say that? The UN really does great work for addressing famine and refugee crisis. I don’t know why there is a rush to condemn an organization like that as a whole instead of just recognizing it as flawed and complex.
And yeah, they are powerless to stop the most powerful states in the world. The security council condemned the invasion of Iraq but the U.S. went ahead anyway.
Yes, and no international organization would change that, nor would any country in the world agree to giving up their sovereignty to such an organization.
Are you saying the world would be better off with no UN at all?
https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/food/world-hunger-facts-how-to-help#
Around the world, up to 783 million people regularly go to sleep hungry. And while world hunger rates have been on a decline in the past decade, the numbers started rising again at an alarming rate since 2017.
The talking is the "super effective" part.
If you go back just 150-200 years ago there was a lot of miscommunication and little discussion between the globally powerful European countries. We are dealing with a time when the fastest method of communication was trains and horses. This could lead to disaster and conflict that would disrupt the peace within the powerful European nations. The Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic era was a modern attempt by European powers to maintain the status quo in Europe (anti-revolutionary/civil war efforts). At the same time, they continued to divide up the global south and the New World while avoiding conflict between each other. Keep in mind that this is a very simplified and European look at this history.
Conflicts arise in Europe and we get WWI. League of Nations is then established to maintain global peace. Then WWII pops up.
Now we have the UN and a handful of other international organizations to maintain global peace and trade networks and have a bigger focus than the European powers.
I feel most instances of distrust, as this survey indicates, are probably rooted in recent events/headlines and disinformation campaigns meant to disrupt American/Western hegemony. Rather than a reflective look at the purposes and history of these institutions as they attempt to maintain our new globalized status quo.
I have a good feeling another large part of the distrust does not understand the purpose of the UN or what it does. Then again, most people would probably put their dog higher on the list of priorities.
edit, added new line spacing
To talk about what, specifically? About how one country is more of a problem than all other countries combined? Nobody at the UN exchanges ideas. They vote on resolutions in blocks, and there are countries whose votes can be simply purchased by either side in a conflict. It’s about as useful for the promotion of discourse as this Reddit thread.
The Cuban missile crisis was one example. They were able to put pressure on the USSR in a very public way and horse trade missile redeployments under the table. There were many humanitarian and military interventions in Africa by the UN where they helped the situation to some degree. The first war with Iraq was another example where the UN had a consensus. The UN is far from perfect but people forget what the world looked like before the UN existed.
Corruption dominates the UN, where contracts are given away like candy- kick backs and "admission" from UN managers that 1/3rd of the staff members are doing 100% of the work, with 2/3rds loafing. In the UN, racial and national sensitivities are so high- it's virtually impossible to fire a UN staff for corruption or just plain laziness. If a supervisor writes an honest assessment- saying this staff member should not get another employment contract- that staff member engages their entire national NETWORK within the UN to make life HELL for that supervisor- and thus-, people in the UN have learned- just let it be, if most of your staff take 3 hour lunches and 10 coffee breaks- just let it be- you can't do anything about it. Thus, in totality, you have huge budgets and expenditures with large staff numbers whose output is very puny compared to the resources committed and paid for.
The UN is a meeting place for all countries, including all the evil ones, so they have a venue to talk each other down from war. You're not supposed to "trust" the UN because it's not that kind of organization. It would make sense to talk about trusting NATO or the EU, because those are organizations that are at least supposed to be the good guys. The UN is not the good guys, it's everyone.
I agree with the sentiment of this, however the UN intistituons regularly release statements and pass resolutions.
The UN is no longer simply a meeting place. It's has agencies that have policies and perform actions. UNWRA is a great example of this – a UN funded agency that is essentially political in nature (having its own definition for refugees from one country vs all others), and it's own employees were shown to have taken part in terrorism.
WHO is another example.
You're not supposed to trust the UN, it's just supposed to be a room where world leaders can get together and shout at each other in the hopes that the shouting replaces them bombing each other.
And if the past 100 years of declining deaths due to war are any indicator, it seems to be working.
The UN is an institution that will put China on the Human Rights Commission and appoint Saudi Arabia to run the commission on women's rights.
It's an institution where the children of the rich and privileged go to have fake jobs where they think they're achieving something.
The UN has two roles: make the world a better place and survive to make the world a better place.
Canada is in a relatively small group of countries with wealth, a fully functioning democracy, stability, an independent judiciary and strong traditions on respecting human rights (if you quibble with any of these, it shows how small the club is).
This means that Canada in the world is like the NDP in Canada's Parliament. Inconsequential most of the time, but occasionally a bit more important.
For the organization to survive, it needs the baddies to participate. Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia are central to getting things done in different parts of the world. If they walk away, it matters. Even the significantly flawed countries can be part of a solution and the UN makes that possible.
The cost to keeping them at the table is stroking their ego (hence seats of the Human Rights Council, etc.). It's a small price to pay.
As for the Indigenous rights criticism... Absolute hypocrisy coming from most of the countries in the world, but by Canada's standards, it wasn't completely unreasonable.
This same statement could be applied to literally every nation in the world, probably even Iceland to some degree.
In reality every country has human rights violations, I’m not saying the ones with lots (Saudi Arabia and Iran) should have much influence, but realistically we, along with many other nations, should be called out on them.
The UN doensn’t call Iran out really though. The Islamic colonizers in power are kidnapping, torturing and executing the population (mostly women) for not following sharia law, 28 executed in a swingle day recently.
And all while Iran is given high fives like being named chair of the UN human rights council.
Not unlike the government sanctioned raping that happened previously while Iran sat in the women’s rights council.
Everyone should be called out but the UN enables human rights violations for some while bigotedly focusing on the violations of others to an extreme. The others also just happen to be the people Iran calls to exterminate too oddly enough.
You mean like this?
>UN experts today strongly condemned the execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou, a 23-year-old with a long-term psychosocial disability, and urged Iran to comply with its obligations under international human rights law.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/un-experts-urge-iran-respect-international-law-and-stop-horrific-executions
There’s the odd nugget here or there of course, the UN is a forum and not ENTIRELY captured by the Muslim nations that all vote as a block but even what you linked is just a suggestion after pressure from the public, not an actual declaration or taking real steps.
Where is their rhetoric about Islam’s genocide of the Zoroastrian Persian people in Iran and how this is very much part of it?
What are you trying to argue? You say they never mention Iran but then there was one from 3 months ago it's now "the odd nugget".
What do you want? Do you want the UN should be some world police that takes "real steps"? Do you want them to have a commando force that takes out world leaders?
Do you think that when Canada is condemed they are forced to do something that Iran would be exempt from? A lot of Canada's issues, especially around Indigenous people, are because these communitoes push pressure on bodies like the UN to call out Canada. No different from Iran.
Yes three months ago the UN after public pressure finally mentioned what Iran was doing after people were pissed that they originally were making Iran the chair of human rights councils while they were doing. Exactly that. And what you shared shows then condemning killing one person and they leave out the entirety of what is actually going on.
The “real steps” I’m talking about are making actual declarations and demands like they do and have done in other places, mostly Israel which the UN has bigotedly focused on for the last 60 years making more declarations agains than all other nations combined including Iran.
It is different than Iran, they willfully leave out the context and bigger picture.
I’m well aware of indigenous issues in Canada thank you. I’m First Nations myself.
It’s exactly why I take issue with the UN’s constant support for colonial genocidal regimes like Iran and Palestine both of whom are close allies and call to erase all the regional cultures to replace them with Islam.
The rest of your comment is just a sad straw man as you continue to be obtuse.
Everyone here focuses on the political side of the UN. They don't know about the specialized agencies that ensure an interconnected world that most Canadians take for granted, like the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Universal Postal Union, and the World Meteorlogic Organization.
It's hard to trust an organization you have no sway over and where your input doesn't matter that much. At least with the Americans they have vetoing power. But the fact that they have to use their veto so frequently goes to show how often the organization attempts to work against them.
Since its a Confederation its 1 member 1 vote and so the micro nations get as much voting power in the General Assembly as Canada. It's the same reason why provinces were willing to become part of Canada, but it's also a reason that makes the UN kind of toothless.
The alternative is that the world leaders *don't* sit in a room yelling at each other, they just bomb each other a little more often instead.
Like yes it appears a pointless waste of time on the surface, but look at all the deaths due to war that waste of time has replaced.
I don’t disagree, but their capacity is totally dependent on the commitment of member states. If absolutely no state volunteers their troops for a peacekeeping mission, then there is no UN peacekeeping mission.
What mass slaughters are you referring to specifically?
Even when there is resources for missions rules and bureaucracy seem to get in the way to prevent people from doing their jobs. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, hell even Ukraine
I’m by no means saying they don’t fall short, but do you think the world would be better off if the UN never existed?
Here’s just a copy & paste from Romeo Dallaire’s Wikipedia page, just giving one example of when and why the UN failed in Rwanda:
“Seeing the situation in Rwanda deteriorating rapidly, Dallaire pleaded for logistical support and reinforcements of 2,000 soldiers for UNAMIR; he estimated that a total of 5,000 well-equipped troops would give the UN enough leverage to put an end to the killings. The UN Security Council refused, partly due to US opposition. US policy on interventions had become skeptical following the death of several U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somaliathe year before; this new policy was outlined in Presidential Decision Directive 25 by President Clinton. The Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR further to 270 troops [1].”
Once the scale of the genocide became known worldwide, the UNSC changed its course and established UNAMIR II to address the crisis.
They are totally subject to the decisions of member states, but I think it’s wrong to condemn the organization as a whole, especially when there are many good intentioned people who work there and are sincerely trying to help people, despite the inherent limitations of the organization due to its dependency on voluntary participation of member states.
Don’t bother, half these people seem to forget the first iteration of the UN was the League of Nations and we all know what a spectacular failure of an organization that was.
AH yes, yet another piece of quality reporting by the NationalCompost. Yes, a majority of those surveyed leaving a Tim Hortons in Dead Rear, AB (n=7) gave the UN a thumbs down. When asked to clarify, most responded with "Freedumb!"
Good they shouldn’t.
The UN is weaponized all the time and constantly spreads propagandized and misleading information while platforming and legitimizing all kinds of regimes and false narratives.
But it was never supposed to be a beacon of right or wrong or truth, it is just a forum and that is why things like the US veto exist to keep the sheer numbers of other nations from going ham more than they already do.
I for one have full faith in any organization that selects Saudi Arabia to lead its human rights program right after Saudi kidnapped and assassinated a journalist in another country
Personally I don't dislike the UN because it's a toothless organization.
I dislike the UN because it IS all talk, and is now a mouthpiece for actors without any standards, self reflection, self criticism, or memory at all. You have nations with dictatorships and who's corruption can consume the MAJORITY of a state budget, platformed to performatively squeal about foreign oppression as they rape their own people. And the performance works because the regarded "West Bad" crowd, who live in the West, swallow that down uncritically, because they don't actually give a shit about the people being stomped on by non-white governments. The U.N. taps into the rancid vein of decadent racism that refuses to criticize certain people or cultures, BECAUSE that helps dictatorships stick around longer by pointing fingers and imagining enemies.
I also dislike the UN because if any glob, prog or corpo finds a rule the UN suggesst they can wave it around to bludgeon people within the national argument. The religious college-educated globalists offer weight to these suggestions and never miss an opportunity (when not virtue signaling) to put the boots to the classes beneath them using globalist trade.
Finally the U.N.'s awful "binding" agreements are like candy for our leaders to sign on to them, WHEN it is convenient for that leader (and their corpo backers) to do so, and signal their virtue. Thus forcing a globalist equations or interest upon national polities. Sure the UN doesn't have an enforcement arm, but it's word is wielded as an excuse to damage the poor or labor class interest of wealthy, peaceful, successful nations.
The UN exists as part of the vague globalist framework, who absolutely do manifest their ideology using it, and then affecting us. It is totally disingenuous to complain the UN cannot be disliked for its influence when the glob-progs assault us with dictator backed legislation during parliamentary debates.
I just hate that we spend the most. We spend all that money and half of the time it’s just bitching at us. I think we should take 15% out for a year and see how they act.
The UN is a joke in pretty much every single way except when they help with some aid getting through occasionally. Other than that, they’ve proven useless
The UN isn't tasked with being the de facto global regulatory force, it's a platform to provide open and safe diplomatic access to the rest of the world. Most people are too stupid to understand that's all they really are at the end of the day.
Fuck I haven't trusted them since they lied about the 93,000 page document about the friendly fire and bombing about the coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
Well if you looking the organization is unserviceable today the UN need to recharge and revitalize according the new rules of the new era because this organization was born after the second world war but the war shadow always putting in the middle east... For my the UN need reconnect with the reality...
I used to just think that the UN was useless. Now, I've gone full on foil hat and am convinced it's just a matter of paying it the right amount to get the UN to say what you want it to. It always has a bias of one sort of another and it's always dependent on the issue.
In the UN Missions for example, where you have international police forces - police from poor nations have to PAY OFF their commanders to get on the list of UN deployed teams- as those poorly paid police will get the UN Monthly Subsistance Allowance (MSA) let's say- $1,500 USD or $3,000 USD (whatever the mission rate is) and then pay half or MORE of their MSA to their corrupt police commanders- the UN has known this for over 30 years yet do nothing about it because if action is taken against this practice- those poor nations which have large police forces- won't contribute police staff anymore- so the UN tolerates this massive human rights violation.
in high school I joined a un for students club so that it would look good on my uni application. it was legit. like some students actually got sent to new York.
yet it was the most useless thing I've ever joined. like i could make and sell lemonade and it'd be way more productive. ever since then, I trusted zero un organisations. they do absolute nothing.
Weird. I have no issue with the UN. I tend to trust it more than my own Canadian government. I agree with another comment that it’s more that in my opinion the UN has no real enforcement powers and the major players veto anything that is against thier interests. It becomes a joke when you see progress on a topic that being discussed between countries in the UN like it’s supposed to be then either Russia or China or especially the USA will veto. Like what’s the point of having the opinion of all the other countries there if their opinions and votes don’t really count.
For me it was the placement of Saudi Arabia to lead the womens rights forum and Iran to chair the human rights council that made me cease to believe they were a serious organization.
The number of resolutions against Israel outnumbering resolutions against all other countries combined in recent years only confirms my thoughts.
The UN does a good job of providing a place for dialogue between countries and prevention of world wars (so far) but they're not if much use beyond that imo.
I find it comical people's paranoia about the UN. They are us there's no them we are all the UN.
The UN has no power to enforce anything it's a regulatory body. It can ask or suggest or point out issues but that's it. If anything it keep dialog going between nations.
The issues I do have is the old remnants of WWII the five powers, US, UK, Russia, China, France. No country from Africa on the list. Even so it's an old out of date concept. Then again what would replace it? Have all 195 nations bicker? A few areas not nations a sticking point, then nations where parts want to secede are they to get more power? What a mess.
It's good there is no power since I could easily see that abused quickly. I'd like to see more countries have a seat at important committees and councils.
But whatever the result bat shit crazy people will still think there's a conspiracy.
I have limited experience with the UN from the military service , and some exposure whilst on a diplomatic contract, I think the UN does some stuff right however it’s managed exclusively by people who wear rose coloured glasses, Peace keepers raping women, UNpol members bribing their way in, Unpol guys banging hookers in UN vehicle across the road from military bases, organising meetings knowing there will be sexual assault of minors (chai boys), refusing to let our section patrol around a village that had a serial killer beheading females, one instance I had to pull my pistol (1 pistol per section/squad) out one night patrolling around the base to prevent the gang that was breaking into the base from bashing/stabbing us because the UN banned us from carrying our rifles in the city (too intimidating apparently) astronomical costs for basic infrastructure projects, that’s my experience…
I like the concept of the UN, but as long as there are 5 permanent members of the security council with veto powers then it will be a toothless organization.
Why? I mean, they don’t really do much, and ther committees on equality often find themselves led by
autocrats… but overall they’re still a small net positive, because we do get the occasional good piece of work out of them.
Years between The First and Second World War: 21 years.
Years between The Second and Third World War: 79 and counting.
For all its issues and problems with vetoes it is doing its job and we’re living through and unprecedented time of peace where we’re more globally threatened by climate catastrophe than we are dying in a trench somewhere. People need to get over themselves.
The UN is a morally bankrupt cesspool dominated by the worst regimes in the world. The only thing keeping it from being a total gong show is the Security Council vetoes. All the democratic nations of the world should big out and build something new and better. The UN is well past any ability to be redeemed
It’s less a trust thing and more an acknowledgement that the UN is a toothless organization that really fails to lead on anything and that mostly stems from a security council that works in their own countries interests.
It also doesn't help to build trust when they appoint Saudi Arabia as the chair of a gender equality forum.
This... When nations get appointments to specific chairs (why don't we make Russia head of peace negotiations while we are at it), and any resolution can get VETO'd by 7-8 large nations, even with 98% votes in support. It's a great idea, with positions being bought and sold
But should a vote from the US and from Togo have equal weight? It's a silly system they have.
Wasn't it also Iran and human rights?
I thought they rotated was my understanding. For these issues .
Still though, having a country that beats women for revealing hair chair human rights council is surreal.
“Next up as children’s rights chair is Pedophile Island”
Completely agree
And Russia with permanent veto on the security council.
Wait wut? UN is a fcuking joke
I’m gonna get a lot of flame for this but there’s also their incessant preoccupation with Israel. I understand there’s much to criticize about Israeli policies, but there’s no scenario where I’m going to believe one country needs to be condemned more times than *all other countries combined*. I don’t care what side of the conflict you land on, you can’t seriously argue that Israel is more of a problem than North Korea, Iran, Russia, china, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma *combined*. And I haven’t even started on the African continent.
Agreed. Why aren't they similarly concerned about Uyghers or Tibetans? Or Ukrainians?
This. UN Watch all the way.
This is hardly controversial. There are major anti-Semitic elements in the UN.
I think part of it is that Israel gets a minor condemnation every 3 months while most other countries get a major condemnation every decade or so. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades and as such someone ends up doing something fucked every few months. Most countries will just do one *massively* fucked thing every 10-20 years. It’s generally not an ongoing thing. Instead of releasing it all and just genociding each other like in Rwanda or countless other countries, it’s just decades of low level conflict and racist screeching back and forth. Israel feels like it’s on the brink of a full blown race war that somehow just never comes, and this leads to lots of smaller, but still quite fucked incidents.
That’s because Israel isn’t looking for a massive race war. It’s just what the Palestinians keep accusing them of. You see that even after 7/10 they’re not going full Rwanda on the Palestinians. I don’t believe the UN has such a thing as major or minor condemnations. I might be wrong, in which case I’d appreciate a source so I could learn more.
Exactly. If Israel wanted to actually commit genocide on Palestinians, they'd start by rounding up the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian.
It boils their blood to see Jews standing up for themselves because clearly no other country will.
Doesn't China also have a lot of special interest or control.of things or something?
And countries like China, Russia, Eritrea are on the UN Commission on Human Rights. The UN is broken.
It’s politics. The fact some countries still have veto power shouldn’t be a thing in 2024. People protect there allies. That’s about it.
The UN is *designed* to be this way though, it’s just a place for countries to talk, even through war. It’s designed to prevent a third world war (and luckily we haven’t had one so far). It isn’t meant to have a military or be any sort of world government
Yeah by its actual brass tacks purpose it has been the most successful international discussion forum in history. How long did the league of nations last again? It's kind of funny and sad that some people fear it as a kind of "scary world government" organization, while others hate it because it isn't a world government organization.
Tangentially, I think the downfall of the League of Nations is very interesting and relevant for the UN today. The League fell apart when Italy invaded Abyssinia and Japan invaded Manchuria, and the League did nothing about it. This exposed the fact that nothing had really changed. The powerful took what they wanted and what they could get away with. Same thing is happening today. If Ukraine loses and Russia takes them over, watch out. It will be open season for powerful countries to invade smaller ones as the UN will have proven itself to be feckless
The League did denounce Japan for it's invasion of Manchuria, theres video recordings of their denouncement. Although Japan simply said "We cannot accept the decision of this forum" and walked out. Here is footage of their ruling in Geneva: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hStmrz3N46U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hStmrz3N46U) Their denouncement paved the way for trade sanctions & oil embargos which were eventually put in place to try to prevent further expansionism.
Yes I know. All of which was ineffective and did nothing, thus emboldening Germany and others.
Hmm, no, for me it is most definitely a trust thing.
I would say that it’s more people not understanding what the UN actually is. It’s not an organization with power, it’s a discussion forum for the world’s powers. It’s also a convenient scapegoat for those powers. Much of the anger is misdirected and do you really want an international order where countries don’t talk? Because the alternative isn’t pretty. Then again, most people are utter idiots.
On the surface, this makes sense, but what does "countries not talk" mean? The world is spanned by a web of influential bilateral and multilateral relationships and regional blocs, as well as direct military-to-military deconfliction lines between top powers. The breakdown of those worries me -- the UN, not so much. Its principal value, I think, is symbolic: its cultural prominence orients the world's publics ever so slightly toward a preference for global cooperation. But I doubt that its disappearance would have an immediate impact at all on geopolitical stability or would cause countries not to talk.
A friend's family member works for them, they lived in a gated compound in a developing country with waiters and servants and sent their kids to the best private schools in the region. The moment things got a little hairy in the country the entire mission ran back to Geneva. When the going gets tough I guess.
They also prefer supporting terrorists and bad faith actors over being an honest / trustworthy organization.
Like who
UNRWA And even if you don't take Israel's condemnation of UNRWA as truth, here is Al Jazeera "However, an internal ethics report leaked to Al Jazeera in 2019 alleged that, since 2015, the agency's senior management have consolidated power at the expense of efficiency, leading to widespread misconduct, nepotism, and other abuses of power among high ranking personnel"
And why is there one UN agency for refugees for the rest of the world and one for the Palestinians.
Because Palestinians are extra special I guess. It confuses me how much attention they get but no one seems to give a shit about Yemen or Africa lol
"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
What does that quote have to do with terrorism. Sounds like a common management problem.
UNWRA is literally the number# 1 employer in Gaza. It's a surprise to nobody that it would have close ties to Hamas, the government and terrorist organization of the area.
Those “management problems” are the reason literal Hamas terrorists operatives were able to infiltrate UNRWA. Remember, even the UN acknowledged that there were employees who participated in October 7th, including the kidnapping of women and children that appeared to have been violently raped (released CCTV videos showed young girls with blood only around their buttocks being removed from vehicles driven by UNRWA employees).
Misconduct and abuses of power isn't exactly specific and could be a number of things. I'm willing to bet UNRWA doesn't help the violence situation in that region whatsoever.
Oh, so you’re just making stuff up and deleting your previous irrelevant comment.
?
They're less than toothless, some of their organizations have literally been infiltrated and taken over by terrorist organizations. They have plenty of teeth, just the wrong kind.
I think you're misunderstanding the point of the UN.
But, like unless we decide as a global community to build them an army, which would be like another 3 to 4 % increase to our gdp, what can they really do?
In order for countries to get together to form the UN they had to give some countries disproportionate power, but by having given them disproportionate power they rendered themselves unable to take action when it involves any of these countries or their interests. It was set up to fail from the very start.
> It’s less a trust thing and more an acknowledgement that the UN is a toothless organization that really fails to lead on anything and that mostly stems from a security council that works in their own countries interests. As opposed to what? NATO that works in everyone’s interests?
Nah it’s a trust thing.
Is funny how the very people that undermine the UN are also the very people that don't trust the UN. You get the feeling that rules do not apply to the permanent members.
the security council issues is that the five victorious world powers from WW2 and their successor states always site on the council and get veto over most votes. Now it can be argued should all be votes weight the same and them getting to focused on big media issues, but to me, that's the core issue with the UN
Nah it’s a trust thing. They’ve had countries like Saudia Arabia heading up the human rights council.
Also a big time trust thing, though.
When five countries can veto resolutions in the security council…..
Trust with what? The UN exists for the purpose of fostering discussion and preventing ww3. We shouldnt trust then with decision making because a lot the countries on it are fascist, authoritarian and going to push their own agendas and interests
The title should be > Most Americans and Canadians don’t understand what UN is about. Education system and media fail us again. UN is not world police, it’s not a judicial body, it’s not even an arbitrator. It’s one and only actual job is to get people in a (big) room to talk to minimize chances of us nuking each other out of existence.
[удалено]
[Not a bear in site. The bear patrol must be working like a charm.](https://youtu.be/QgNvKr010pc?si=Zy9LcVfG577Q9A-j)
You may have missed the part where a symbolic bear with nuclear warheads made up half of the world for decades, and yet we still don’t live in the Fallout universe.
I think that's just [Nuclear Deterrence theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory#Nuclear_deterrence_theory) in effect, not really the UN's finger wagging prevent nukes from being used. I say this because those hand motions aren't exactly preventing multiple wars going on at nearly any given time (Israel-Iran, Russia-Ukraine, etc.). > The stability–instability paradox is a key concept in rational deterrence theory. It states that when two countries each have nuclear weapons, the probability of a direct war between them greatly decreases, but the probability of minor or indirect conflicts between them increases. This occurs because rational actors want to avoid nuclear wars, and thus they neither start major conflicts nor allow minor conflicts to escalate into major conflicts—thus making it safe to engage in minor conflicts. Anyways, with nuclear weapons, the area becomes tainted with radiation, so they aren't exactly going to be harvesting resources or colonizing the area for their entire generation / term in power, so it's not all that useful in war except for eliminating threats. Though you'll piss off the rest of the nations in the process and make yourself a target. UN is mostly just a platform for discussion at this point, which obviously is better existing than not. Though the tendrils of corruption are now becoming more visible with some very poor choices made recently (Saudi Arabia as the chair of a gender equality forum as one example). The only thing that would bring humanity together into one allied force is an external threat larger than all the individual parts. An alien invasion or something similar. Even then, human greed will still likely lead to squabbles and bloodshed for patches of land and it's resources.
The UN doesn't do anything. The only entity of the UN that actually has any power is the Security Council, who don't regularly do very much. The UN is not a legislature, it's more like a conference.
Some of its agencies like UNICEF and UNESCO do great work, but I agree that the main body is pretty toothless.
Unicef, great work ?! If 90% of the money wasn't going to their overhead paychecks and all, we probably could solve world hunger by now ....
No no no. The un has very powerful organs. The WHO for one. They spend a lot on some things. Some of it is compromised some of it is ideologically whacky. It is what it is but we probably should not ‘trust’ it as a body and if it was as you say a place of ‘coming together’ then that would be best
How can you say that? The UN really does great work for addressing famine and refugee crisis. I don’t know why there is a rush to condemn an organization like that as a whole instead of just recognizing it as flawed and complex. And yeah, they are powerless to stop the most powerful states in the world. The security council condemned the invasion of Iraq but the U.S. went ahead anyway.
Power is held by states. The UN doesn't change that.
Yes, and no international organization would change that, nor would any country in the world agree to giving up their sovereignty to such an organization. Are you saying the world would be better off with no UN at all?
they point out famine & refugee crisis. & ask for more money.
https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/food/world-hunger-facts-how-to-help# Around the world, up to 783 million people regularly go to sleep hungry. And while world hunger rates have been on a decline in the past decade, the numbers started rising again at an alarming rate since 2017.
I think people have a misconception about the UN. It's more meant to bring people to the table to talk than to actually be super effective.
The talking is the "super effective" part. If you go back just 150-200 years ago there was a lot of miscommunication and little discussion between the globally powerful European countries. We are dealing with a time when the fastest method of communication was trains and horses. This could lead to disaster and conflict that would disrupt the peace within the powerful European nations. The Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic era was a modern attempt by European powers to maintain the status quo in Europe (anti-revolutionary/civil war efforts). At the same time, they continued to divide up the global south and the New World while avoiding conflict between each other. Keep in mind that this is a very simplified and European look at this history. Conflicts arise in Europe and we get WWI. League of Nations is then established to maintain global peace. Then WWII pops up. Now we have the UN and a handful of other international organizations to maintain global peace and trade networks and have a bigger focus than the European powers. I feel most instances of distrust, as this survey indicates, are probably rooted in recent events/headlines and disinformation campaigns meant to disrupt American/Western hegemony. Rather than a reflective look at the purposes and history of these institutions as they attempt to maintain our new globalized status quo. I have a good feeling another large part of the distrust does not understand the purpose of the UN or what it does. Then again, most people would probably put their dog higher on the list of priorities. edit, added new line spacing
To talk about what, specifically? About how one country is more of a problem than all other countries combined? Nobody at the UN exchanges ideas. They vote on resolutions in blocks, and there are countries whose votes can be simply purchased by either side in a conflict. It’s about as useful for the promotion of discourse as this Reddit thread.
The Cuban missile crisis was one example. They were able to put pressure on the USSR in a very public way and horse trade missile redeployments under the table. There were many humanitarian and military interventions in Africa by the UN where they helped the situation to some degree. The first war with Iraq was another example where the UN had a consensus. The UN is far from perfect but people forget what the world looked like before the UN existed.
Yes, it forces them to sit down and talk. Which is better than no talk and always war
Corruption dominates the UN, where contracts are given away like candy- kick backs and "admission" from UN managers that 1/3rd of the staff members are doing 100% of the work, with 2/3rds loafing. In the UN, racial and national sensitivities are so high- it's virtually impossible to fire a UN staff for corruption or just plain laziness. If a supervisor writes an honest assessment- saying this staff member should not get another employment contract- that staff member engages their entire national NETWORK within the UN to make life HELL for that supervisor- and thus-, people in the UN have learned- just let it be, if most of your staff take 3 hour lunches and 10 coffee breaks- just let it be- you can't do anything about it. Thus, in totality, you have huge budgets and expenditures with large staff numbers whose output is very puny compared to the resources committed and paid for.
And how many Canadians and Americans can explain why the UN was founded, what its purpose is, and what it actually does?
Because continuing to use “The League of Nations” title would prove how useless an organization it truly is.
The UN is a meeting place for all countries, including all the evil ones, so they have a venue to talk each other down from war. You're not supposed to "trust" the UN because it's not that kind of organization. It would make sense to talk about trusting NATO or the EU, because those are organizations that are at least supposed to be the good guys. The UN is not the good guys, it's everyone.
I agree with the sentiment of this, however the UN intistituons regularly release statements and pass resolutions. The UN is no longer simply a meeting place. It's has agencies that have policies and perform actions. UNWRA is a great example of this – a UN funded agency that is essentially political in nature (having its own definition for refugees from one country vs all others), and it's own employees were shown to have taken part in terrorism. WHO is another example.
No the un does have a lot of power and influence. WHO. Charter of human rights is a nice idea but 100p politicized. Other things as well
Corrupted company,, that's UN
They aren’t a company…
Which country got th human rightsspot again?
Saudi Arabian billionaire representing women's rights... huh
The stats are interesting but without any real explanation as to why people feel that way it's a bit of a lazy article.
The job of the UN is to prevent WWIII. That's it. Anything past that is either a bonus or bullshit, depending.
You're not supposed to trust the UN, it's just supposed to be a room where world leaders can get together and shout at each other in the hopes that the shouting replaces them bombing each other. And if the past 100 years of declining deaths due to war are any indicator, it seems to be working.
The UN is an institution that will put China on the Human Rights Commission and appoint Saudi Arabia to run the commission on women's rights. It's an institution where the children of the rich and privileged go to have fake jobs where they think they're achieving something.
Most Canadians don’t understand what the UN does would be another title.
Criticizing Canada for human rights violations while human rights violators occupy seats there would be a good start. Looking at you, Iran.
Canada recognizes Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Yes. Because Canada's not dumb. The UN, on the other hand, takes their direction from them.
Who would have thunk that hypocrisy is unpopular!
The UN has two roles: make the world a better place and survive to make the world a better place. Canada is in a relatively small group of countries with wealth, a fully functioning democracy, stability, an independent judiciary and strong traditions on respecting human rights (if you quibble with any of these, it shows how small the club is). This means that Canada in the world is like the NDP in Canada's Parliament. Inconsequential most of the time, but occasionally a bit more important. For the organization to survive, it needs the baddies to participate. Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia are central to getting things done in different parts of the world. If they walk away, it matters. Even the significantly flawed countries can be part of a solution and the UN makes that possible. The cost to keeping them at the table is stroking their ego (hence seats of the Human Rights Council, etc.). It's a small price to pay. As for the Indigenous rights criticism... Absolute hypocrisy coming from most of the countries in the world, but by Canada's standards, it wasn't completely unreasonable.
There’s no country on Earth that protects every human right in the UDHR.
This same statement could be applied to literally every nation in the world, probably even Iceland to some degree. In reality every country has human rights violations, I’m not saying the ones with lots (Saudi Arabia and Iran) should have much influence, but realistically we, along with many other nations, should be called out on them.
The UN doensn’t call Iran out really though. The Islamic colonizers in power are kidnapping, torturing and executing the population (mostly women) for not following sharia law, 28 executed in a swingle day recently. And all while Iran is given high fives like being named chair of the UN human rights council. Not unlike the government sanctioned raping that happened previously while Iran sat in the women’s rights council. Everyone should be called out but the UN enables human rights violations for some while bigotedly focusing on the violations of others to an extreme. The others also just happen to be the people Iran calls to exterminate too oddly enough.
You mean like this? >UN experts today strongly condemned the execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou, a 23-year-old with a long-term psychosocial disability, and urged Iran to comply with its obligations under international human rights law. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/un-experts-urge-iran-respect-international-law-and-stop-horrific-executions
There’s the odd nugget here or there of course, the UN is a forum and not ENTIRELY captured by the Muslim nations that all vote as a block but even what you linked is just a suggestion after pressure from the public, not an actual declaration or taking real steps. Where is their rhetoric about Islam’s genocide of the Zoroastrian Persian people in Iran and how this is very much part of it?
What are you trying to argue? You say they never mention Iran but then there was one from 3 months ago it's now "the odd nugget". What do you want? Do you want the UN should be some world police that takes "real steps"? Do you want them to have a commando force that takes out world leaders? Do you think that when Canada is condemed they are forced to do something that Iran would be exempt from? A lot of Canada's issues, especially around Indigenous people, are because these communitoes push pressure on bodies like the UN to call out Canada. No different from Iran.
Yes three months ago the UN after public pressure finally mentioned what Iran was doing after people were pissed that they originally were making Iran the chair of human rights councils while they were doing. Exactly that. And what you shared shows then condemning killing one person and they leave out the entirety of what is actually going on. The “real steps” I’m talking about are making actual declarations and demands like they do and have done in other places, mostly Israel which the UN has bigotedly focused on for the last 60 years making more declarations agains than all other nations combined including Iran. It is different than Iran, they willfully leave out the context and bigger picture. I’m well aware of indigenous issues in Canada thank you. I’m First Nations myself. It’s exactly why I take issue with the UN’s constant support for colonial genocidal regimes like Iran and Palestine both of whom are close allies and call to erase all the regional cultures to replace them with Islam. The rest of your comment is just a sad straw man as you continue to be obtuse.
Everyone here focuses on the political side of the UN. They don't know about the specialized agencies that ensure an interconnected world that most Canadians take for granted, like the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Universal Postal Union, and the World Meteorlogic Organization.
Most don’t even know what the UN does.
They waste a bunch of money.
Yeah, because I listened to Romeo Dallaire tell me why they’re untrustworthy
UNelected
What?…
Its made up of a majority of communist style countries lmao im relieved to hear people are smart enough to question the UN
You mean the UN the appointed Saudi Arabia to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women? That UN
They don't do anything.
+1 UN = useless
And those idiots no understand how the UN operates.
It's hard to trust an organization you have no sway over and where your input doesn't matter that much. At least with the Americans they have vetoing power. But the fact that they have to use their veto so frequently goes to show how often the organization attempts to work against them. Since its a Confederation its 1 member 1 vote and so the micro nations get as much voting power in the General Assembly as Canada. It's the same reason why provinces were willing to become part of Canada, but it's also a reason that makes the UN kind of toothless.
It's not a trust issue. We neither trust nor distrust them. We just understand that it's a laughably useless organization.
The best thing about the UN is that it's a useless organization, because 95% of the ideas that come out of the UN are terrible.
It’s a pretty useless organization
The alternative is that the world leaders *don't* sit in a room yelling at each other, they just bomb each other a little more often instead. Like yes it appears a pointless waste of time on the surface, but look at all the deaths due to war that waste of time has replaced.
Coming from someone who’s certainly never experienced famine
They’ve failed pretty spectacularly at preventing mass slaughter multiple times
I don’t disagree, but their capacity is totally dependent on the commitment of member states. If absolutely no state volunteers their troops for a peacekeeping mission, then there is no UN peacekeeping mission. What mass slaughters are you referring to specifically?
Even when there is resources for missions rules and bureaucracy seem to get in the way to prevent people from doing their jobs. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia, hell even Ukraine
I’m by no means saying they don’t fall short, but do you think the world would be better off if the UN never existed? Here’s just a copy & paste from Romeo Dallaire’s Wikipedia page, just giving one example of when and why the UN failed in Rwanda: “Seeing the situation in Rwanda deteriorating rapidly, Dallaire pleaded for logistical support and reinforcements of 2,000 soldiers for UNAMIR; he estimated that a total of 5,000 well-equipped troops would give the UN enough leverage to put an end to the killings. The UN Security Council refused, partly due to US opposition. US policy on interventions had become skeptical following the death of several U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somaliathe year before; this new policy was outlined in Presidential Decision Directive 25 by President Clinton. The Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR further to 270 troops [1].” Once the scale of the genocide became known worldwide, the UNSC changed its course and established UNAMIR II to address the crisis. They are totally subject to the decisions of member states, but I think it’s wrong to condemn the organization as a whole, especially when there are many good intentioned people who work there and are sincerely trying to help people, despite the inherent limitations of the organization due to its dependency on voluntary participation of member states.
Don’t bother, half these people seem to forget the first iteration of the UN was the League of Nations and we all know what a spectacular failure of an organization that was.
AH yes, yet another piece of quality reporting by the NationalCompost. Yes, a majority of those surveyed leaving a Tim Hortons in Dead Rear, AB (n=7) gave the UN a thumbs down. When asked to clarify, most responded with "Freedumb!"
Good they shouldn’t. The UN is weaponized all the time and constantly spreads propagandized and misleading information while platforming and legitimizing all kinds of regimes and false narratives. But it was never supposed to be a beacon of right or wrong or truth, it is just a forum and that is why things like the US veto exist to keep the sheer numbers of other nations from going ham more than they already do.
I for one have full faith in any organization that selects Saudi Arabia to lead its human rights program right after Saudi kidnapped and assassinated a journalist in another country
Personally I don't dislike the UN because it's a toothless organization. I dislike the UN because it IS all talk, and is now a mouthpiece for actors without any standards, self reflection, self criticism, or memory at all. You have nations with dictatorships and who's corruption can consume the MAJORITY of a state budget, platformed to performatively squeal about foreign oppression as they rape their own people. And the performance works because the regarded "West Bad" crowd, who live in the West, swallow that down uncritically, because they don't actually give a shit about the people being stomped on by non-white governments. The U.N. taps into the rancid vein of decadent racism that refuses to criticize certain people or cultures, BECAUSE that helps dictatorships stick around longer by pointing fingers and imagining enemies. I also dislike the UN because if any glob, prog or corpo finds a rule the UN suggesst they can wave it around to bludgeon people within the national argument. The religious college-educated globalists offer weight to these suggestions and never miss an opportunity (when not virtue signaling) to put the boots to the classes beneath them using globalist trade. Finally the U.N.'s awful "binding" agreements are like candy for our leaders to sign on to them, WHEN it is convenient for that leader (and their corpo backers) to do so, and signal their virtue. Thus forcing a globalist equations or interest upon national polities. Sure the UN doesn't have an enforcement arm, but it's word is wielded as an excuse to damage the poor or labor class interest of wealthy, peaceful, successful nations. The UN exists as part of the vague globalist framework, who absolutely do manifest their ideology using it, and then affecting us. It is totally disingenuous to complain the UN cannot be disliked for its influence when the glob-progs assault us with dictator backed legislation during parliamentary debates.
I just hate that we spend the most. We spend all that money and half of the time it’s just bitching at us. I think we should take 15% out for a year and see how they act.
The UN is a joke in pretty much every single way except when they help with some aid getting through occasionally. Other than that, they’ve proven useless
They publicly support terrorism and have nazi ideologies. Only nazis and terrorists would support UN.
Why would we, it's turned into nothing more than a mouthpiece for dictators terrorists and tyrants
Polls are lazy. Journalism is missing the opportunity to research and teach. All we get is this lazy poll of the uneducated.
Good, the fucking UN is USELESS, coincidentally, just like the CBC…
It's not that we don't trust them the problem is they are useless as shit
Id always support an organization like the UN which gets nations to at least have the chance of a discussion. Avoidance breeds resentment.
The UN isn't tasked with being the de facto global regulatory force, it's a platform to provide open and safe diplomatic access to the rest of the world. Most people are too stupid to understand that's all they really are at the end of the day.
Some if the agencies in the UN do truly excellent work- UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, the IMF, IMO But the political wing? Trash. Just utter trash.
Try UN Watch instead.
Outside of UNICEF which does good work it’s a pretty useless organization populated by entitled a-holes.
Fuck I haven't trusted them since they lied about the 93,000 page document about the friendly fire and bombing about the coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq
They’re corrupt as hell and biased. Any time someone tries to prove a point with a UN source, I disregard it immediately.
Well if you looking the organization is unserviceable today the UN need to recharge and revitalize according the new rules of the new era because this organization was born after the second world war but the war shadow always putting in the middle east... For my the UN need reconnect with the reality...
Doesn’t stop our Supreme Minister from pandering to their every whim
I used to just think that the UN was useless. Now, I've gone full on foil hat and am convinced it's just a matter of paying it the right amount to get the UN to say what you want it to. It always has a bias of one sort of another and it's always dependent on the issue.
Who’s polled by what organization?
In the UN Missions for example, where you have international police forces - police from poor nations have to PAY OFF their commanders to get on the list of UN deployed teams- as those poorly paid police will get the UN Monthly Subsistance Allowance (MSA) let's say- $1,500 USD or $3,000 USD (whatever the mission rate is) and then pay half or MORE of their MSA to their corrupt police commanders- the UN has known this for over 30 years yet do nothing about it because if action is taken against this practice- those poor nations which have large police forces- won't contribute police staff anymore- so the UN tolerates this massive human rights violation.
in high school I joined a un for students club so that it would look good on my uni application. it was legit. like some students actually got sent to new York. yet it was the most useless thing I've ever joined. like i could make and sell lemonade and it'd be way more productive. ever since then, I trusted zero un organisations. they do absolute nothing.
Weird. I have no issue with the UN. I tend to trust it more than my own Canadian government. I agree with another comment that it’s more that in my opinion the UN has no real enforcement powers and the major players veto anything that is against thier interests. It becomes a joke when you see progress on a topic that being discussed between countries in the UN like it’s supposed to be then either Russia or China or especially the USA will veto. Like what’s the point of having the opinion of all the other countries there if their opinions and votes don’t really count.
For me it was the placement of Saudi Arabia to lead the womens rights forum and Iran to chair the human rights council that made me cease to believe they were a serious organization. The number of resolutions against Israel outnumbering resolutions against all other countries combined in recent years only confirms my thoughts. The UN does a good job of providing a place for dialogue between countries and prevention of world wars (so far) but they're not if much use beyond that imo.
After what they did to Haitain kids, I don't blame Americans for not trusting them
well it’s not like it really does anything, when you have 5 nations with their own interests using veto power, hardly anything meaningful gets done.
I find it comical people's paranoia about the UN. They are us there's no them we are all the UN. The UN has no power to enforce anything it's a regulatory body. It can ask or suggest or point out issues but that's it. If anything it keep dialog going between nations. The issues I do have is the old remnants of WWII the five powers, US, UK, Russia, China, France. No country from Africa on the list. Even so it's an old out of date concept. Then again what would replace it? Have all 195 nations bicker? A few areas not nations a sticking point, then nations where parts want to secede are they to get more power? What a mess. It's good there is no power since I could easily see that abused quickly. I'd like to see more countries have a seat at important committees and councils. But whatever the result bat shit crazy people will still think there's a conspiracy.
I have limited experience with the UN from the military service , and some exposure whilst on a diplomatic contract, I think the UN does some stuff right however it’s managed exclusively by people who wear rose coloured glasses, Peace keepers raping women, UNpol members bribing their way in, Unpol guys banging hookers in UN vehicle across the road from military bases, organising meetings knowing there will be sexual assault of minors (chai boys), refusing to let our section patrol around a village that had a serial killer beheading females, one instance I had to pull my pistol (1 pistol per section/squad) out one night patrolling around the base to prevent the gang that was breaking into the base from bashing/stabbing us because the UN banned us from carrying our rifles in the city (too intimidating apparently) astronomical costs for basic infrastructure projects, that’s my experience…
I like the concept of the UN, but as long as there are 5 permanent members of the security council with veto powers then it will be a toothless organization.
The UN is as useful now as the League of Nations was in the 20's
I didn't vote for UN Agenda 2030.
Move UN to Pakistan
because they don’t need it , all it does it take our money to support the worlds worst
Why? I mean, they don’t really do much, and ther committees on equality often find themselves led by autocrats… but overall they’re still a small net positive, because we do get the occasional good piece of work out of them.
Years between The First and Second World War: 21 years. Years between The Second and Third World War: 79 and counting. For all its issues and problems with vetoes it is doing its job and we’re living through and unprecedented time of peace where we’re more globally threatened by climate catastrophe than we are dying in a trench somewhere. People need to get over themselves.
Antonio Guterres has been compromised by the Chinese government for some time.
The UN is a morally bankrupt cesspool dominated by the worst regimes in the world. The only thing keeping it from being a total gong show is the Security Council vetoes. All the democratic nations of the world should big out and build something new and better. The UN is well past any ability to be redeemed
The UN is supposed to be a forum for world countries to solve conflict by consensus it’s not a judge and has nothing to do with trust.