Opinion: The 79th UN General Assembly must focus on these 3 issues

As the United Nations prepare for their annual General Assembly next week, many questions have been raised about the importance and effectiveness of the institution. While UNGA cannot adequately address the plethora of crises, adversarial rivalries, and persistent violent conflicts globally, it does stand a good chance of acting on three major crises adversely affecting nearly every country — climate change, human rights violations, and the pervasiveness of violence worldwide. It can do so forcefully through specific U.N. bodies because political considerations may play a lesser role in those: the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N. Human Rights, and the U.N. Security Council. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty adopted in 1992 that provides a framework for global cooperation on climate change and has near-universal membership. Its mission includes stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions and allowing ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change. Since its inception, two critical child treaties have been adopted: the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which set binding emission reduction targets, and the Paris Agreement in 2015, which set a global pact to limit temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Although the UNFCCC has made significant progress, the continuing severity of climate change, manifested in massive fires, floods, and extreme temperatures, is causing havoc around the world and will have dire implications for the global community unless U.N. members use their collective power to do much more to combat climate change. To begin with, the UNFCCC secretariat should strengthen its weak enforcement mechanisms, which have limited the effectiveness of agreements such as those in Kyoto. It should also increase the national targets, as current national pledges are inadequate to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Second, transparency and accountability can be enhanced by employing stronger monitoring systems and reporting on emissions and climate actions. Third, technology transfer can be accelerated by sharing clean technologies with developing countries while providing them more financial and technical assistance. Fourth, the secretariat should engage nonstate actors by increasing the involvement of businesses, cities, and civil society in climate action. Fifth, the secretariat must improve upon public awareness and education and integrate climate action with sustainable development goals. Ultimately, success will depend on increased political will and cooperation from member countries. To achieve that, it will be necessary to streamline decision-making processes because the consensus-based approach often slows progress and dilutes agreements. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights The second most critical U.N. agency is OHCHR, whose primary mission is to promote and protect human rights globally. Its mandate includes taking a leading role in addressing human rights violations globally and coordinating that throughout the U.N. structure. In addition, it promotes the ratification and implementation of international human rights standards by taking preventive actions and responding to human rights violations. Finally, it provides critically essential education, technical assistance, and advisory services on all human rights-related issues. Sadly, despite its indispensable importance, OHCHR has failed to address many grave human rights violations sufficiently and is unable to effectively confront powerful countries such as China for their gross human rights abuses. Furthermore, OHCHR experiences limited accessibility in many countries such as Russia and fails to follow through in its efforts to implement its recommendations adequately. Another issue hampering OHCHR is that countries known for their human rights violations, such as China, Venezuela, and Sudan, are members of the Human Rights Council, which imposes further constraints on its mission. Several measures could be taken to strengthen OHCHR's effectiveness. First, it is imperative to bolster data collection and analysis to track human rights progress or lack thereof. This would significantly strengthen the agency's operational impact on the ground, help prevent human rights abuses, improve the follow-up mechanisms to ensure implementation, and boost the HRC’s ability to respond to urgent crises. In addition, OHCHR should develop stronger partnerships between national statistical offices and human rights institutions and increase accessibility for the victims of human rights violations while reforming the HRC’s membership standards by excluding states engaged in severe human rights violators. OHCHR would considerably enhance its performance by implementing such reforms, provided that U.N. member states help it to fulfill its critical mission. The Security Council has often failed to effectively rein in international violence for several reasons. --— The UN Security Council The U.N. Security Council is the primary U.N. body responsible for addressing global violence and maintaining international peace and security. Its powers include recommending peaceful conflict resolution methods, investigating disputes and calling on parties to settle their conflict peacefully, imposing sanctions, deploying U.N. peacekeeping operations, and authorizing force when necessary to maintain or restore peace. The Security Council coordinates with other U.N. entities, such as the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, to implement its decisions and manage field operations. However, disagreements between permanent members, as seen in the current Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East, limit the council's effectiveness. Many of the council’s shortcomings lie in its composition, structure, and power play. It has 15 members — five permanent members, which are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as the P5, with veto power — and 10 nonpermanent members elected for two-year terms. Any resolution taken requires nine affirmative votes, including concurring votes of permanent members. The Security Council has often failed to effectively rein in international violence for several reasons, including the veto power held by the P5. The P5 prioritizes their geopolitical interests over global peace and security, often leading to selective action in some conflicts while ignoring others. In addition, the council lacks reliable means to enforce its resolutions when countries choose to ignore them, and the slowness of the council's decision-making process limits its ability to compel compliance. Several potential reforms have been proposed to address these issues and improve the council’s effectiveness. Few are hard, if not impossible, to change or modify, including reforming the veto power and enlarging the council to make it more representative of the global community. Nevertheless, several working methods can substantially improve its effectiveness, including enhancing transparency, inclusivity, and the council's operations, developing mechanisms to hold member states accountable for implementing resolutions, and focusing on preventing mass atrocities. The dangerously heightened global tensions require bold action to prevent many elements of the three prevalent crises from escalating or becoming irreversible. Despite UNGA’s limitations, with concerted efforts, the leaders of the major powers should attempt to mitigate some of these ominously unfolding crises and use the platform of the upcoming assembly to that end.