00:00The world's largest international organization is turning 80.
00:04Founded in 1945, at the end of World War II,
00:07the United Nations' stated mission was to ensure global peace and security.
00:12Since then, it has overseen peace-given missions,
00:15delivered humanitarian aid, and mediated conflicts worldwide.
00:19But the world the UN was created to serve has changed dramatically.
00:24It now faces complex challenges from the Russian-Ukraine war.
00:28None of this would have happened if Putin had not started this full-scale aggression, full-scale war.
00:38As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized,
00:41from the very beginning, Russia has been and remains open to negotiations
00:45to address the root causes of the conflict.
00:48To the devastating conflict in Gaza.
00:50No, we are not part of a cease-fire monitoring mechanism.
01:00Our focus in Gaza currently is on humanitarian assistance.
01:05These conflicts have tested the UN's role in global peace governance
01:10and raised doubts about how much it can really do.
01:13Uncertainty deaths pushed countries to look after their own interests
01:17by striking deals outside the UN and looking for quick workarounds.
01:22If we get this contagion effect where countries follow each other
01:27outside of the United Nations and create ad hoc processes where they're going to agree,
01:33then we've really sort of taken apart the international community
01:39that we developed and established in 1945.
01:43The organization is also facing a founding crisis
01:46that's making it harder to operate at full capacity.
01:49That's due to the way it gets money to operate.
01:52So the United Nations entirely depends on its functioning on its member states.
01:57So states have to essentially give, contribute a part of their GDP to the United Nations.
02:06This is what they've committed to doing and this is what is expected of them every year.
02:12But its biggest contributor, the U.S., has cut founding on the President Donald Trump,
02:17who has called the UN ineffective and criticized its stance on immigration.
02:22What is the purpose of the United Nations?
02:25The UN has such tremendous potential.
02:28I've always said it.
02:29It has such tremendous, tremendous potential.
02:33But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.
02:37The U.S. now owes over $2.8 billion in unpaid contributions.
02:43And with budget cuts looming,
02:45the UN is already planning to reduce its peacekeeping force by 25%.
02:49The UN's problems don't stop there.
02:53Demands to address long-standing power imbalances within the organization
02:57are another source of pressure.
02:59Top-level decision-making, including at the Security Council,
03:03is dominated by five major powers, the U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia.
03:10This has prompted smaller, less powerful countries to speak out.
03:15A comprehensive reform is needed in the United Nations, especially in the Security Council.
03:21In fact, the world is bigger than five.
03:26We need to democratize the decision-making procedure at the UN.
03:31Calls for reforms include those around Taiwan's role in the UN.
03:36The country has been excluded from all UN buddies that require recognized statehood since 1971.
03:43That year, the seat for China changed hands from the Republic of China,
03:47Taiwan's official name, to the People's Republic of China.
03:50But over the past three decades, a movement has grown to bring Taiwan back into the fold.
03:56It includes everything from measures of support from diplomatic allies
04:00to rallies held at the UN General Assembly each year.
04:03Amid these pressures, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called reform crucial
04:13and launched an initiative to modernize the organization.
04:17But while there is hope that the UN's role in maintaining world order can endure,
04:22the road to meaningful change could be long and difficult.
04:26Patrick Chen and I Chi for Taiwan Plus.
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