In 2009, conservative documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz made a film highlighting the “incompetence and corruption at the heart of the UN.” Thirteen years later, nothing has changed. Every time the U.N. starts to look like a somewhat credible institution, we’re reminded of how astonishingly ridiculous a place it is.
For instance, today, the American-led effort to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, the U.N. panel that promotes women’s rights, succeeded. This is obviously a positive development, especially given the ongoing crackdown on the widespread Mahsa Amini protests. But why did the Islamic Republic have a seat on the commission in the first place? And China, a country where anti-natalist policies have engendered female infanticide, is still on the panel. Qatar, fair-weather friend of the U.S. and a serial human- rights abuser, moreover, retains its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
It has also recently emerged that the U.N.’s managing attorney overseeing the Human Rights Council’s probe into Israel’s treatment of Palestinians during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups claimed that the U.S. government was under the thumb of the “Jewish lobby.” Evidently, antisemitism is a problem at the U.N. Surprise, surprise.
Given America’s permanent seat with veto power on the U.N. Security Council, the body’s most influential committee, the international body is still an essential component of American primacy. We can’t just dispense with it. But efforts to reform it should be a priority of the incoming Congress.