Opinion UN once mattered. It needs to go back to its roots

Eight decades after its founding, the United Nations, an institution created to safeguard peace and advance human progress, finds itself betrayed by a massive swerve away from universalism to nationalist egocentrism. It stands paralysed by a polycrisis it was meant to prevent or resolve.

From Gaza to Ukraine, climate change to income inequality, and rampant terrorism to frenetic rearmament, the UN’s ability to build and uphold the consensus on and deliver global public goods is, as António Guterres puts it, “gridlocked in dysfunction”. Its moral and institutional credibility stands eroded, and its very relevance questioned, even by its creators — the victors of World War II.

Thant Myint-U’s Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World arrives at a moment when the world urgently needs to rediscover what global leadership once meant and why multilateralism is needed more than ever. It is a must-read for believers in humanity’s shared destiny.

The book is both an absorbing biography of U Thant, the first Asian and developing-country Secretary-General, and a mirror held up to today’s multilateral decay. Drawing on newly opened archives and family papers, the author, himself a UN official, recreates a period when the UN commanded respect.

He traces how a quiet Burmese teacher-turned-diplomat steered the organisation through the Cuban Missile Crisis, Congo’s secession, Vietnam and the humanitarian tragedies of Biafra and Bangladesh.

U Thant’s decade at the helm, from 1961 to 1971, remains a benchmark for principled leadership. During the Cuban crisis, he worked discreetly between Kennedy and Khrushchev to avert nuclear catastrophe. He stood firm against apartheid, questioned America’s war in Vietnam and expanded the UN’s development architecture through the creation of UNCTAD, UNDP, and UNITAR. Long before sustainability got embedded in the UN DNA, he saw that peace, development and the environment were inseparable.

Yet Peacemaker does not idealise the UN’s evolutionary journey. It portrays U Thant’s growing despair as the Security Council became captive to power politics, and budgetary starvation undermined the UN’s ability to act. His anguish during the Bangladesh crisis prefigured today’s helplessness over Gaza.

The answer to what is needed for the restoration of the UN’s relevance lies in what may be called the Trinity of Multilateral Responsibility, comprising three interdependent actors: The Secretariat, the Member States, and We the People. When these actors harmoniously work for global public goods on the basis of what PM Modi and India emphasise as the credo of “one Earth, one family, one future,” or Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the institution becomes the transcendental force it is meant to be. When one weakens or becomes self-serving and myopic, the UN is pushed towards the precipice of extinction.

The Secretariat once embodied initiative, independence and moral authority. Secretaries-General such as U Thant exercised discretion and spoke truth to power without partiality. Today, political bias and bureaucratic control have replaced principled leadership in a polarised world. The Member States, especially the privileged P5, were entrusted to support the UN as the custodian of GPGs (global public goods) and a champion of the disadvantaged. Instead, the most powerful countries have jettisoned GPGs, including sustainable development and aid to poor countries. As shown by the UNGA being belatedly approached for a resolution on the Gaza peace arrangement, the UN exists to provide a flag of convenience and pick up the pieces after unilateral actions. The Security Council veto, selective interventions for regime change, double standards on counter-terrorism, violations of the principles of sovereignty, institutional capture, refusal to reform and democratise the UNSC and chronic defunding have hollowed out the UN system.

The UN Charter begins with “We the People” because the institution was conceived as a partnership with humanity itself. Civil society, academia, the media, youth and women’s movements and the private sector once sustained this moral energy. Today, that civic engagement has withered into indifference. Global citizenship has been replaced by parochial nationalism, digital tribalism and purpose with profit-seeking.

For India, U Thant’s story carries deep resonance. His non-alignment, respect for sovereignty and advocacy of equality among nations reflected India’s own diplomatic creed. He understood India’s regional compulsions during the 1965 war and the 1971 Bangladesh crisis, even under intense global pressure. More broadly, his belief that developing countries must shape the global agenda anticipated India’s present leadership role in a multipolar world.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has emerged as a bridge-builder between North and South, East and West. Its stewardship of the G20 and the Voice of the Global South platform reaffirmed that reinventing multilateral institutions is an urgent moral imperative. India’s call for democratising global governance and giving the Global South a decisive voice echoes U Thant’s conviction that legitimacy rests on justice and inclusion.

Peacemaker, therefore, transcends biography. It is a reckoning with the UN’s moral drift and a call to restore the Trinity, which functioned relatively well under U Thant, creating a virtuous circle and balance. The Secretariat must reclaim independence, Member States must commit resources and responsibility, and We the People must re-engage with the ideals of global solidarity and one planet.

As India’s global stature rises, it carries both opportunity and obligation to champion that renewal for delivering peace, development, equity and dignity for all. U Thant’s forgotten compass still points the way.

The writer is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and former deputy executive director of UN Women