Today is United Nations Day and Sri Lanka has much to be grateful to this world body, especially some of its affiliated groups like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). During and after the war, Sri Lanka had some issues with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) but the problems are now being sorted out. Many Sri Lankans have held top posts in the UN and one important area which Sri Lanka helped work out in the 1970’s was the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in which our diplomat Shirley Amarasinghe played a key role.   

To mark this historic event, the UN has issued a special statement outlining its vision and goals. It says UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the ratification of this founding document by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN officially came into being.  

There is no other global organization with the legitimacy, convening power and normative impact of the UN. Today, the urgency for all countries to come together to fulfil the UN’s vision has rarely been greater.  According to the UN, the 75th anniversary comes at a time of great disruption for the world, compounded by an unprecedented global health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with severe economic and social impacts. But it is also a reminder that times of struggle can become an opportunity for positive change and transformation. To mark the 75 years of the UN, Member States recently held a high level event, where they reaffirmed and recognized that our challenges are interconnected and can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism.   

To celebrate UN Day, an annual concert is usually held in the General Assembly Hall. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the concert was prerecorded and screened in the General Assembly Hall on Thursday October 22. The concert was sponsored by Italy’s mission under the theme, “Re-imagine, rebalance, restart: recovering together for our shared humanity”. This included a performance featuring Roberto Bolle, accompanied by other world class etoiles and the Orchestra of Teatro alla Scala, all recorded at La Scala Theater in Milan. By connecting us and creating common understanding, art and culture create the fertile ground from which genuine solidarity can emerge. In this spirit, music and dance can help bring us together to re-imagine a world “rebalanced”, to be designed and built together for present and future generations, the UN says. Highlighting the significance of the 75th anniversary and reflecting on the experience of the pandemic, the 2020 UN Day performance leveraged the power of music and dance to capture our collective commitment to co-operation, multilateralism and global solidarity.   

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us in the most powerful way that we are closely interconnected and only by working together and in solidarity can we build resilience against future pandemics and other global challenges, the UN says. In January 2020, Secretary General António Guterres launched a global conversation asking people through surveys and dialogues about their hopes and fears for the future, along with their priorities for international co-operation. The findings of this global dialogue have been taken into account by world leaders and resulted in the adoption of a forward-looking political declaration during the high-level event of the 75th anniversary celebrations. The declaration was negotiated through an intergovernmental process under the theme, “The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism”. The name “United Nations” was coined by the United States then President Franklin D. Roosevelt and first used in the Declaration by United Nations on January 1, 1942, during Second World War.   

Though the UN generally does not get involved in the internal politics of member countries, most independent political analysts believe US President Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the vital climate change accord, reduced funds to the WHO on the apparently baseless charge that it is supporting China and taken other unilateral measures that have weakened the UN. Most US and world analysts say they hope that at the presidential election on November 3, the American people will realize their mistake and elect a new administration headed by the Democratic Party’s veteran Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who have pledged to “renew the soul of America”.