The UN Says It Wants to Restore Trust. But Who Has Been Listening to Africa?

The first days of the 81st General Assembly have produced familiar promises about peace, justice and multilateralism. But beneath the speeches lies a harder question: can an international system built around yesterday's power structures deliver justice in today's world?

By BlackNews.uk

NEW YORK — Every September, the world's most powerful people gather beneath the blue UN flag and tell the world that the international system matters.

This year, however, there is a striking difference.

The question is no longer simply whether the United Nations matters. The question being asked from the podium, in different ways and from radically different political perspectives, is whether the institution still works — and, crucially, whether it works for everyone.

The President of the 81st General Assembly, Bangladesh's Khalilur Rahman, put the question bluntly at the opening of the debate: outside the UN's walls, people are not asking whether the organisation still exists; they are asking whether it works. The session's theme is "Restoring trust' managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.

That phrase — for all — may be the most important phrase of this year's General Assembly.

Because the speeches delivered so far expose a world divided not only by war, but by competing ideas about whose security matters, whose sovereignty is respected, whose suffering receives attention and whose voice counts when the rules of the international system are written.

Africa is no longer prepared to be an after thought

For African countries, the argument regarding the UN's credibility is not theoretical.

Africa has 54 states at the General Assembly, making it the largest regional bloc. Yet the security Council — the UN body with primary responsibility for international peace and security — still has no permanent African member.

That contradiction sits at the centre of the wider debate about UN reform.

France's Emmanuel Macron used his address to support Security Council reform and specifically called for greater African representation. He also acknowledged the resentment created by perceived double standards: sovereignty defended in one part of the world can appear less valuable when the crisis is in Africa or the West Asia.  

That is significant because the language of reform is no longer confined to African governments.

The question is becoming unavoidable: how can an institution claim to represent the international community when the architecture of its most powerful decision-making body reflects a world that largely disappeared decades ago?

The issue is particularly resonant this week because several major African states are not represented by their presidents at the General Debate. Nigeria is represented by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, South Africa by Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola and Egypt by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly. Kenya and Sierra Leone, among others, have senior leaders present.

Those absences should not be turnedinto a simplistic judgement about African commitment to the UN. Countries havedomestic political, diplomatic and practical reasons for deciding who represents them.

But they do form part of a larger picture.

Africa wants a greater role in shaping the global system, while the global system continues to debate whether it is willingto give Africa greater institutional power.

Gaza has become a test of the meaning of international law

The most persistent theme across the opening speeches has been the crisis of international law.

Macron warned against what he described as a return to a "law of the jungle", arguing that international law must impose meaningful limits on state behaviour. He pointed to Gaza and Sudan's El Fasher as examples of humanitarian catastrophe and defended the role of the International Court of Justice.

Other leaders have approached the same crisis from very different positions.

Jordan's King Abdullah II used his address to challenge Israeli policies in Gaza, while Israel has continued to defend its security position and its actions against Hamas. Argentina's Javier Milei, meanwhile, delivered one of the most sweeping attacks on the UN itself, arguing that the organisation has failed at its central purpose and has exceeded its legitimate role.

The differences are profound.

But underneath them is a question that cannot easily be dismissed:

What happens to international law when powerful states can disagree about which rules apply, when they apply and to whom?

That question matters far beyond Gaza.

It matters in Sudan.

It matters in Ukraine.

It matters in the Caribbean.

It matters whenever smaller states ask whether sovereignty is genuinely universal orsomething that becomes stronger or weaker according to the geopolitical importance of the country concerned.

For communities shaped by the history of colonialism, that question carries particular weight.

Colonialism has not disappeared simply because the colonial flags have

One of the most consequential developments surrounding this year's General Assembly isthe increasing institutional attention being given to the consequences of slavery, thetrafficking of enslaved Africans and colonialism.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has issued General-Recommendation No. 40 on reparatory justice for harms and continuing consequences associated with colonialism, the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery. The recommendation addresses the legal responsibilities of states andprovides a framework for considering reparatory justice.

This is not a marginal historical discussion.

It goes directly to the question of how today's global inequalities were produced.

The modern international economy did note emerge in a vacuum. Wealth, land, labour, trade routes and political power were accumulated through centuries in which Africans and people of African descent were subjected to enslavement and colonial domination.

The consequences did not disappear when independence arrived.

They can be seen in arguments over debt, development, trade, resource extraction, migration, climate finance and representation.

That does not mean every contemporary inequality can simply be attributed to colonialism. Nor does it mean every demand framed in the language of reparations commands universal agreement.

But it does mean that the history is increasingly impossible to separate from the politicsof the present.

And that makes the 25th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, to be commemorated at the UN later this month, particularly important for Black communities around the world.

Sudan reminds us that attention is itself a form of power

There is another uncomfortable theme running through the UN's agenda: some crises become global emergencies while others struggle to remain visible.

Sudan is one of them.

The UN itself has identified Sudan alongside Gaza, Ukraine and other conflicts as a major humanitarian crisis. Yet the level of sustained international attention has varied dramatically from one conflict to another.

The same problem exists in Haiti and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

For Black audiences, this matters.

It raises an uncomfortable question about the global media and diplomatic system: whose suffering becomes a permanent international story, and whose suffering becomes background noise?

That is not an argument that suffering-should be ranked.

It is an argument that suffering should not need geopolitical importance before it receives sustained attention.

The Ukraine debate exposes another fault line

Ukraine remains central to the European security debate.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used his 23 September address to focus on Russia's war and its military cooperation with North Korea.

Macron reaffirmed France's support for Ukraine and proposed a "double moratorium" covering strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure and activity in the Black Sea.

Yet the wider UN debate reveals something more complicated.

Many countries outside Europe have spentyears arguing that the international systemhas demonstrated different levels of urgencydepending on where a war takes place.

That does not erase the suffering of Ukrainians.

Nor does acknowledging that concern diminish the suffering of Palestinians, Sudanese, Congolese or Haitians.

The challenge for the UN is precisely to construct a system in which one crisis does not need to compete with another for recognition.

Even artificial intelligence has become a question of power

The General Debate is also looking beyond traditional diplomacy.

Artificial intelligence has appeared repeatedly in the speeches.

Macron argued that AI governance cannot be left to the United States, China and a small number of private companies. Milei took the opposite direction, warning against what he regards as excessive regulation and arguing that technological innovation should not be constrained by fear.

The disagreement is revealing.

AI is being presented not merely as a technological issue but as a question of sovereignty.

Who owns the infrastructure?

Who controls the data?

Who sets the rules?

Who benefits economically?

And will African and Caribbean countries become consumers of technologies designed elsewhere, or participants in determining the standards by which those technologies operate?

Those questions may ultimately prove as important as the traditional debates over military power.

The UN's credibility will be measured  outside the General Assembly Hall

There is a temptation, every September, to treat the UN General Debate as theatre.

There are flags.

There are speeches.

There are handshakes.

There are carefully negotiated phrases about peace.

But the speeches this year contain a more serious argument.

The world is not simply disagreeing about individual wars.

It is disagreeing about the architectureof power itself.

Macron is calling for renewed multilateralism and Security Council reform. Milei is questioning  

 the legitimacy and scope of the UN. Zelenskyy is demanding continued international pressure over Russia's war. Leaders from the Middle East are challenging the application of international law. African states continue to press for a greater role in global governance. And the UN leadership is openly talking about restoring trust.

These are not minor disagreements.

They represent competing visions of whatthe international order should become.

For Black communities, particularly across Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and the wider diaspora, there is a particular reason to pay attention.

The UN is debating many of the issues that have shaped Black political life for generations: racism, colonialism, sovereignty, war, economic inequality, migration, climate vulnerability, development and representation.

The question is therefore not whether Africa or the Black diaspora should simply support the UN.

The more useful question is whether the UN can change enough to remain credible to the people it claims to represent.

That means representation cannot stop at speeches.

It means examining who makes decisions.

It means asking how international lawis enforced.

It means confronting the continuing consequences of slavery and colonialism without reducing contemporary politics to history.

It means ensuring that Sudan is not forgotten when another crisis dominates the headlines.

And it means making sure that the future rules governing technologies such as AIare not written exclusively by the richest states and corporations.

The 81st General Assembly has only just begun.

More than 190 countries are entitled to speak, and the General Debate continues through 28 September.

So the final verdict on this year's speeches cannot yet be written.

But one message is already unmistakable.

The old language of international order is no longer enough.