The West’s response to problems in the developing world always seems to be many days — actually years — late and billions of dollars short. I am increasingly frustrated turning on the news and hearing UN Secretary General António Guterres deliver essentially the same speech, applied to famine, climate change, political unrest or war, diseases, and anything else. The more he tells the world that we are at a tipping point, or paints the picture of dire consequences, the more people seem to tune him out. What I would like to see is a speech in which he tells us what he is going to do about it. But therein lies the problem: despite the wonderful work it has done, the UN is really powerless because it must come to the nations of the world and beg for support. It is also powerless to address major catastrophes of war and instability because of geopolitical forces that work against it. The atrocious war in Tigray and Ethiopia, the gang warfare in Haiti, the war in Ukraine all need concerted international intervention, but all that can be done is bully-pulpit hand-wringing by the UN. Individual donations by people around the world — we have donated repeatedly to the World Food Program — are important, but until the nations of the world come together and support unanimously the interventions of the UN to address the underlying causes, we will just be putting bandaids on the open sores of hunger, disease and war.

The West’s response to problems in the developing world always seems to be many days — actually years — late and billions of dollars short. I am increasingly frustrated turning on the news and hearing UN Secretary General António Guterres deliver essentially the same speech, applied to famine, climate change, political unrest or war, diseases, and anything else. The more he tells the world that we are at a tipping point, or paints the picture of dire consequences, the more people seem to tune him out. What I would like to see is a speech in which he tells us what he is going to do about it. But therein lies the problem: despite the wonderful work it has done, the UN is really powerless because it must come to the nations of the world and beg for support. It is also powerless to address major catastrophes of war and instability because of geopolitical forces that work against it. The atrocious war in Tigray and Ethiopia, the gang warfare in Haiti, the war in Ukraine all need concerted international intervention, but all that can be done is bully-pulpit hand-wringing by the UN. Individual donations by people around the world — we have donated repeatedly to the World Food Program — are important, but until the nations of the world come together and support unanimously the interventions of the UN to address the underlying causes, we will just be putting bandaids on the open sores of hunger, disease and war.

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