I was at the United Nations headquarters in New York to participate in a meeting on antisemitism and hate speech in football. The topic is urgent, especially in World Cup years, when billions of people are connected through the sport.
Being there also led me to a deeper reflection.
The UN was founded in 1945, after the greatest tragedy in human history. It was created to preserve peace, promote human rights, bring nations closer together, and help build a more just world.
Brazil has a deep historical connection with this mission. In 1947, the Brazilian diplomat Oswaldo Aranha presided over the 1st special session of the General Assembly and led the negotiations that culminated in Resolution 181 – the Partition Plan for Palestine, which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.
His performance earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and solidified the tradition, maintained to this day, of Brazil opening the general debates of the Assembly.
Another Brazilian, Bertha Lutz, was among the few women delegates at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, where the UN Charter was drafted. Facing resistance from major powers, she fought to have equality between men and women explicitly included in the organization's founding text, making it the first international law document to enshrine this parity. And there is the sacrifice of Sérgio Vieira de Mello, who dedicated 34 years to the UN on missions in the most difficult places on the planet – Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor – and died in 2003 in an attack in Baghdad while serving as special envoy in Iraq. In his honor, the UN established World Humanitarian Day.
These names remind me that the UN's mission has never been just to prevent wars. It is also to confront poverty, reduce inequalities, and promote health, education, and dignity for all. Therefore, it is inevitable to ask: does the UN of today remain faithful to this mission? Often, it seems to me that it isn't. While the world grapples with forgotten wars, famine, growing inequalities, millions of refugees, and profound social injustices, the organization frequently focuses disproportionate attention on Israel.
The numbers illustrate this distortion. From 2015 to 2024, the General Assembly approved 173 resolutions against Israel – while all other countries in the world combined were the target of only 80 resolutions in the same period.
This doesn't mean Israel is above criticism. No democracy is. But when criticism loses its proportionality and turns into obsession, it ceases to strengthen human rights and instead weakens the credibility of the institution itself.
Combating antisemitism is not about defending a government, but about defending a universal principle: no form of prejudice can be tolerated.
The UN remains an indispensable institution. However, it will be far more respected when it refocuses its energy on what inspired its creation, protected by the same courage of Oswaldo Aranha, Bertha Lutz, and Sérgio Vieira de Mello: protecting the human dignity of all, without selectivity, without obsessions, and without ideological filters.
This editorial was originally published in Portuguese in Poder 360.
