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The Broken Promise of 1945: How the Global South Rose at the UN and Demanded a New World

Part 1 By Hassan Husaini mni When the United Nations was born on October 24, 1945, the world was still burying its dead. Seventy million people had perished in a war that had reduced entire continents to rubble, and the men who gathered in San Francisco to sign the Charter understood that they were engaged in an act of desperate hope. The Preamble they produced remains one of the most ambitious sentences ever written by human hands: a pledge to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” to reaffirm “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,” and to uphold “the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” It was a covenant between the powerful and the powerless, a promise that the strong would be bound by law and the weak would be protected by it. That promise has not been kept, and the 81st General Assembly was where the bill finally came due. To be fair, the UN’s achievements are real. It helped prevent a third world war, provided a forum for dialogue during the Cold War, midwifed decolonization, and gave the world the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The World Health Organization eradicated smallpox; UNICEF saved millions of children; peacekeepers stood between warring parties in dozens of conflicts; and the Sustainable Development Goals gave the world a shared vision for ending poverty. These are not small things. But from the beginning, the architecture was poisoned at the root. The Security Council was built to serve the victors of 1945. Five nations—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China—were handed the veto, a device that allows any one of them to block any resolution no matter how overwhelming the international consensus. This was never a tool of justice. It was a tool of protection, a means by which the powerful could exempt themselves from the very laws they demanded others obey. The veto is not a flaw in the design of the United Nations; it is the design. The consequences have been catastrophic. During the Cold War the Council was paralysed while the Soviet Union crushed Hungary, while America burned Vietnam, while Moscow occupied Afghanistan. In 1994, as nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered in Rwanda over a hundred days, the Council debated the meaning of the word “genocide” and refused to act, with Washington actively obstructing a robust peacekeeping force. In 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a war of aggression against Iraq without Council authorisation; Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it “illegal,” and his words changed nothing. In Syria, Russia has vetoed resolution after resolution while the Assad regime gassed its own people. Over and over, the veto has shielded the guilty and abandoned the innocent, and over and over, Africa and the Global South have paid the price. It was into that graveyard of broken promises that the 81st General Assembly spoke with astonishing clarity. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil warned that the United Nations was drifting towards “irrelevance,” denounced the paralysis of the Security Council as “unacceptable,” and declared plainly that “the world of 1945 is not the world of today.” He demanded a global financial architecture that puts people before profit, and he came not only with grievances but with a Brazilian initiative on climate change—proof that the South is bringing solutions, not just complaints. President William Ruto of Kenya sharpened the knife. Africa, he reminded the hall, is home to more than 1.4 billion people and is the only major region without permanent representation on the Security Council. It is a permanent item on the Council’s agenda—the Sahel, the Horn, the Great Lakes, always Africa—yet it is denied a permanent voice in the decisions that shape its own peace. “This is not just a matter of equity,” he said. “It is a matter of justice.” President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana reinforced the point, calling for a global order built on justice, equity and mutual respect, and reminding his peers that the struggle is fought on two fronts: the global and the domestic. Vice President Kashim Shettima of Nigeria carried Africa’s most populous nation into that debate, speaking for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Nigeria’s argument was that no single nation—however powerful—can solve climate change, terrorism or economic inequality alone, and that multilateralism must therefore be renewed. But Shettima was equally emphatic that cooperation must rest on equity, not on the perpetuation of an unjust order. He pressed Africa’s case for a permanent seat, insisting the continent’s voice must be heard where decisions about its future are made. Crucially, he did not stop at institutional reform. He spoke honestly about democracy and good governance as the foundations of development, acknowledging that building strong democratic institutions and ensuring elections reflect the genuine will of the people remains an unfinished struggle. He named terrorism as a scourge that has cost thousands of Nigerian lives and demanded global cooperation against it. He spoke of the debt burden crushing African economies—much of it incurred by corrupt leaders—and called for a financial system that works for all nations. And he spoke with a moral authority few could match: Nigeria has moved from military rule to democracy, has bled in peacekeeping missions across the world, and has led in ECOWAS and the African Union. But it was the Prime Minister of Niger, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, who delivered the most defiant African address of the session. His message was uranium, sovereignty, France, Ukraine, the Alliance of Sahel States, and a declaration that Niger will never again surrender control of its resources. He declared: “For more than half a century, Niger’s uranium has lit the cities of Europe while our cities have remained in darkness. That injustice is now over.” He announced that Niger had recovered control of SOMAÏR in June 2025 and declared that the uranium currently produced and stockpiled belongs exclusively to Niger. “The current stock belongs to our country,” he said. “It does not belong to anyone, and we will sell it to all those who wish to buy.” After foreign operators left, equipment was sabotaged, but Niger invested approximately 30 billion CFA francs to restart production entirely with Nigerien workers and experts. “Not a single foreigner was involved in that,” he declared. Then came his accusation against France and Ukraine. He argued that the conflict in the Sahel is not merely terrorism but part of an attempt to regain control over African resources. “Niger’s uranium, Mali and Burkina Faso’s gold, lithium, gas, oil and so many other riches still make the former colonial powers salivate,” he said, describing terrorism in the region as “the cynical machinery of recolonization dressed in the trappings of extremism.” He then directly accused France, with Ukrainian complicity, of destabilizing the central Sahel. “The Sahel sees, the Sahel hears, the Sahel remembers, and the Sahel understands things very well,” he declared, before delivering a stark warning: “They are about to attack our military positions and our oil installations. But inshallah they will find what they deserve if they do so.” That was not diplomatic ambiguity. That was a direct warning from the UN podium. Niger described the Alliance of Sahel States as “a profound, lasting, irrepressible and irreversible change, Inshallah.” He said: “Our resources belong to our peoples. Our future will no longer be decided elsewhere.” He revealed that the AES now has a 5,000-person unified force, expandable to 15,000, its own investment and development bank, biometric passport, television channel, press agency, radio and confederation parliament. Importantly, he said their development bank “finances our projects and programs using our own resources.” This was striking because, unlike many of the African speeches delivered at this UNGA, Niger spent considerable time emphasizing domestic financing. The government, he said, is financing agriculture and basic social services through “voluntary contributions of Nigeriens themselves, in addition to revenues drawn from the exploitation of our mineral and oil resources.” He said oil and uranium revenues are being directed toward security, agriculture, electrification, water, sanitation, education and healthcare. “These are our results that we have achieved through our own means and resources,” he declared. The government claims its agricultural program has produced a major change: “For the first time in decades our country has not faced food shortages or had to call upon foreign assistance.” It now intends to halve grain imports by the end of 2027. Niger explicitly named its “true friends”: Togo, Türkiye, Morocco, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China. He separately gave particularly strong recognition to Algeria, calling it “a kindred and neighboring country,” and credited Algeria with substantial investment in Niger’s natural resources, support for its defense system, and cooperation in health, education, energy, water and agriculture. And, of course, Niger identified Mali and Burkina Faso not merely as friends but as its core partners in the Confederation of Sahel States. The geopolitical picture presented from the podium was remarkably clear: the AES family of Mali and Burkina Faso as core partners, Algeria as a strategic neighbor singled out for support, and Togo, Türkiye, Morocco, Russia and China as countries explicitly called “true friends.” On Palestine and Gaza, Niger expressed concern and called for protection of civilians and unrestricted humanitarian access, reaffirming support for a two-state solution. On Security Council reform, Niger reaffirmed the Ezulwini Consensus and said Africa’s exclusion from permanent membership must stop being “the subject of sterile debates repeated day after day.” And in perhaps the clearest summary, the Prime Minister declared: “Niger intends to fully exercise its sovereignty over its natural resources and will never again accept any restriction imposed from outside on its sovereign right to freely choose its partners.” He added: “That right is inalienable and it is non-negotiable.” Perhaps no sentence captured the tone better than this: “Our resources belong to our peoples. Our future will no longer be decided elsewhere.” Then came Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados, who delivered what many in that chamber will remember for the rest of their lives. Speaking without a single note, holding the assembly in absolute silence, she wove climate, debt and inequality into one seamless indictment of a rigged global system. She described small island states paying with their existence for the carbon emitted by industrialised powers, a financial architecture that suffocates those least able to pay, and an order that treats poor lives as expendable. “We are not asking for charity,” she said. “We are asking for justice.” It was a masterclass in leadership, and it proved that true power lies not in armies but in ideas articulated with courage. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa completed the chorus, the former demanding a ceasefire and a Palestinian state, the latter speaking from a nation that survived apartheid and had just taken Israel to the International Court of Justice. Ramaphosa bound Palestine to Western Sahara, to Cuba, to Venezuela, insisting no nation is above the law. Together, these voices were not begging. They were diagnosing. And their diagnosis was unanimous: what stands in New York is not a system of justice. It is a system of power. Until that changes, its legitimacy will continue to bleed away.    

Oct 8, 2026 • 35

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