Eyes wide shut: United Nations larger than life

The world is looking at the United Nations through distorting lenses. People are used to seeing just a part of it at first sight. In most cases they will stop at the first glance and will not explore deeper.

In terms of areas of responsibility, there is very little left outside the mandate of the United Nations system as such, in everything that matters in international affairs. The mandate covers outer space and the bottom of the sea, development and disarmament, refugees and development, human rights and accounting, law and culture, labour and climate, health and communications, security and accounting, and the list can go on.

Unfortunately, public opinion does not see this. Even those interested will never know how much anonymous, highly technical, and apparently boring international norms influence their life. They will never know how much they owe to the United Nations as a whole. They will never understand how much evil the United Nations prevents.

The media is not interested in good news. Children immunised, refugees protected, starving people fed, conflicts prevented, lives saved, rights respected, all these daily activities are outside their sphere of interest. If there is a disagreement in the Security Council, this will certainly be breaking news. If a peace-keeping operation in the field fails or does not achieve expected results because of a lack of means made available by the member states, oh, yes, that will trigger an immediate impulse to inflate and generalise disappointment.

Eventually, we may understand the narrow-mindedness and the interests of the media, as well as the inherent subjective choice of politicians when they play to the gallery. But experts and diplomats should indeed try hard to see the whole forest, not just the falling trees.

Diplo’s courses on multilateral diplomacy are just this: they open our eyes to see the United Nations and its work in its complexity, not only what can be seen through the keyhole.