Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Monsoon flooding, refugee crisis not to mention the threat of nuclear war.  These are some of the catastrophes that face our planet this September day.  Add to that the deliberate acts of terror and one wonders if the human condition has a future.  Indeed does it deserve a future?

Amongst the most distressing issues are the deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, sundry acts of terrorism as well as the chaos in Africa and the consequent mass migration.  These are human catastrophes which are the result of human behaviour.  These can be fixed if the human race in aggregate wants to fix them. The U.N. is the evolved institution that is at the centre of world order, and it (the UN) clearly is struggling to maintain any discipline or uniformity of behaviour democratic or otherwise.

Behind the raison d’etre for the UN is the keeping of the peace and the rule of international law and the relief of human disaster.  There is a constant struggle against the differences rather than the similarities of the international community.  Some would say, that nationalism and religious fundamentalism are the key areas of conflict and they may be right,

However, this is an impossibly complex set of issues that harbour the yet more complex matters such as competitive individual and national needs. The management of relative wealth, education, health and welfare all crowd in, an accident of geography seems to mitigate against relative success. In addition, there are the vagueries of leadership and they range from unpredictable populism to totalitarianism.  The rulers ofNorth Korea and Zimbabwe are just two examples where the great mass of the world’s opinion agree that they are just plain wrong.  The former in addition to routine murder and torture of its citizens is threatening nuclear catastrophy whilst the latter is a matter of plain thievery and the wrecking of a prospering economy. There are many other examples of rulers and communities who to the majority of world opinion believe them to be wrong.

Wrong is a big word, and conditioned by the definition of what ‘right’ means.  Sadly, on the one hand, things like women’s’ rights, freethinking, are accepted in some nations they are not in others.  The death penalty is still used in numerous states, dictators seem to be able to rise to power in the vacuum of ignorance.

The U.N. is all we have, it is certainly imperfect.  However, it exists and the institution is the only forum for all these varied and complex conditions to be aired.  Messrs Trump, Mwgabe, Kim Jong Un, and others can have a theatre where their ideas are aired.  The UN has also limited powers of intervention and an inglorious history of failure.

Nevertheless, the UN is the only hope we’ve got, so lets all support it in any way we can, for without it the world would be an even more chaotic planet.