Issue No. 96

The UN General Assembly at 80

Later this month, world leaders, diplomats, and politicians from across the world will gather in New York for the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting under the banner 'Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights.' Under current circumstances, the theme of 'better together' feels more evocative of a plea to save a failing marriage than any anticipated genuine commitment to multilateralism. It comes as no surprise that the multilateral order is badly adrift, with the age of the Middle Powers--alongside China and the US--bearing down upon the grim-seeming decades to come. What celebrations will be planned for the UN's 80th birthday will have to be seen, but with the Gaza Strip lying in ruins and the contours of the 'illiberal globalised' alliance in shape, it is hard to envisage anything beyond a continued attempt to maintain the slipping status quo. And though Gaza and Ukraine will—understandably—absorb much of the international oxygen, the Horn of Africa is facing its most intense crisis for decades. 

The European-US axis that once underpinned the liberal international order—underwritten, of course, by the American military and economic superpower—has been battered by the return of Trump. The American president has returned to a style of peacemaking that blends commercial dealmaking and performative politics. Humanitarian development and liberal peacebuilding now appear relics of a different age, but what is coming into sharper focus should be of immense concern. Akin to the wars of conquest of the 17th and 18th centuries, the rules of a more anarchic international order appear to be one of ruthless, bilateral extraction. The 'state' is being hollowed out, and particularly in regions such as the Horn of Africa, where there remains a dearth of legitimacy and power projection from the capital to the peripheries. Forget the rhetoric of service delivery; it is data, gold, oil, and natural resources that are the currency of the modern age.

It is perhaps understandable that the UN is then facing a crisis of legitimacy, relevance, and funding, with the Secretary-General overseeing a period of managed decline. The institution was built post-World War II in a bipolar world, intended to prevent war between the American and Soviet empires. And it did, but today, the mechanisms and structures of the UN--partly as a reflection of the anarchic member states--feel poorly suited for the two principal crises of our age, the climate crisis and the disregard for International Humanitarian Law. Against this backdrop, the US abeyance of UN funding, the savaging of USAID and the slashing of aid budgets by European donors are helping to push the UN into a financial blackhole. Fewer dollars must go to mounting needs, and UN positions in key crisis-hit countries are not being filled. But even so, the clout of the UN in such countries is being diminished, with assertive 'Middle Powers' stepping into the vacuum. 

Under this grim auspices, policymakers will begin arriving in New York and weigh such appeals. And while the wars in Gaza and Ukraine will seize most of the headlines, the conflict and famine in Sudan continue to rage, with over 25 million estimated to face acute food insecurity and over 11.5 million internally displaced. The international response to the destructive violence has been fitful, disinterested, and lacklustre at best, with no serious peace tracks in the works-- or at least none that can bring about a sustainable and inclusive political settlement. Instead, there remains no common definition of the problem, nor a concerted willingness to tackle the only path to peace, which inevitably lies through Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Cairo. In the meantime, chemical weapons, ethnic targeting, mass killings, rape as a weapon of war, weaponisation of aid and hunger, torture, and more besides have defined and will continue to mould this conflict.

Against this backdrop, it is General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the Sudanese army commander, who is anticipated to travel to New York to 'represent' his country again. Al-Burhan himself was sanctioned earlier this year by the US for refusing to participate in peace talks, while his army has been cited for using chemical weapons. Neither is likely to elicit any significant response from the internationals gathered, but it has been the continued recognition of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) as the inheritors of the Sudanese state that has kneecapped the UN's own response to the conflict at successive intervals, not least allowing Port Sudan to limit aid into Darfur last year.

But al-Burhan's planned presence further emphasises what has been abundantly clear for some time, that this remains a military regime, with the merest sprinkling of civilian dressing. Even after the appointment of Kamal Idris as a 'civilian' PM, al-Burhan reshuffled his military comrades in mid-August, selecting a new inspector general and air force commander.  Most consequently-- though the extent to which this can be realised is unclear-- he instructed that all other armed forces aligned with the army, ranging from Islamist brigades to former Darfuri rebels, were brought under his command. Even so, the presence of al-Burhan, as well as Saudi, Emirati, and Egyptian officials, in New York may present another opportunity for the US-- and there have been some initial, unsuccessful meetings in recent weeks-- to press the beginnings of at least a cessation of hostilities. But under such auspices, one should expect there to be no room for the divided Sudanese civilians in any post-conflict government dispensation.

The UN has struggled to formulate a peace track for Sudan, particularly with its United Nations Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, considered amenable to the Sudanese army. But the UNGA nevertheless affords the opportunity for some much-needed pre-emptive diplomacy regarding Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the looming threat of war. Again, the pre-eminent multilateral, the African Union—the guarantors of the calamitous Pretoria agreement, and others have all been missing in action despite the mutual troop build-up on the borders, and the menacing rhetoric. There remains a small window of opportunity to prevent another war, which would surely devastate both countries, and intersect with the Sudanese war to catastrophic humanitarian and political consequences for the entire Horn. It is the US, as well as the assorted Gulf powers, that will once again hold the keys to preventing an eruption of conflict in the coming weeks.

It is anticipated that Addis, meanwhile, will unveil the completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) around the Ethiopian New Year and ahead of the UNGA. Part of the rationale behind Addis's timing is that it hopes to constrain Cairo's inevitable attempts to rally a response against it in New York, and particularly from the Americans. With its ancient civilisation dependent on the Nile waters, the GERD has long been a red line for the Egyptian government and has repeatedly remonstrated with Washington to intervene. In July, Trump stated that the GERD dispute is "a big problem" that the US is "working on" resolving the issue, and that "if I am Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile." That has not translated into any meaningful public mediation, however, and the rising fears of conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea could well draw Cairo into the fray as well.

Finally, it is perhaps fair to say that each country's delegation reflects the junctures at which its own government will arrive in New York. It came as little surprise, then, that Somalia's federal government plans to bring along a 32-member team to New York, according to a leaked list submitted to the US Embassy in Nairobi. Among those on the list are the president's daughter, son, and cousin, who is also an MP. Perhaps some justification for such a large delegation can be made, with Somalia sitting upon the UN Security Council for 2025-2026, but it certainly isn't a good look with the multitude of political and security crises at home. And it is par for the course for a government that has flogged off swathes of public land in Mogadishu and established a reputation for widespread graft in Somalia.

The UN has existed for 8 decades, with its relevance and impact ebbing and flowing with the globe's geopolitical contours. But it is hard to consider 2025 as anything other than a nadir of many of the founding tenets of the body. And it may be that worse is yet to come, with Israel's obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the Russian irredentism unchecked by the US, and a host of other bush-fire conflicts that threaten to become conflagrations. It is the Horn, though, that faces perhaps the starkest convergence of state fragility, militarised politics, humanitarian emergencies, and external predation, with the region transforming into a crucible where the unravelling of the global order is most violently laid bare.

The Horn Edition Team