By Anthony Iwuoma
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Once again, the caravans arrive in New York; chariots of protocol, entourages of vanity, entouraged by debt. The world leaders descend upon the marble temple of diplomacy, the United Nations General Assembly, to exchange solemn nods and perfumed speeches. The air trembles with rehearsed sincerity. Cameras blink. Translators perspire. And the planet, weary witness, rolls its eyes.
Here, in this grand cathedral of hollow voices, every nation is equal, by microphone, not by measure. The small islands of the Pacific are as “sovereign” as the empires that once drowned them. The poorest can speak beside the richest, provided they remember who pays the bills. One country, one vote, and five vetoes to nullify them all.
Observe the altar: five permanent thrones draped in old victory banners, relics of a war fought when most of the world was still colonized. The United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China sit like celestial landlords, each clutching the veto—the sceptre of selective morality. These are the self-appointed sentinels of world peace, baptizing their bombs as humanitarian missions and their interests as “international order.”
The rest of humanity? Choir members. Backup singers to a song already written.
Africa, the continent that cradles the most flags in that assembly, remains the orphan at the feast, summoned for applause but never for authorship. Its 54 nations, united mostly in being ignored, are the perennial petitioners for a seat among the divine. Every September, someone from the continent steps up to the microphone and delivers a rousing 15-minute sermon about reform. The applause roars. And then—nothing happens. Because reform at the UN is like a unicorn sighting: everyone talks about it, but no one has ever seen it. So, year after year, reform is postponed—the way one postpones a visit to a poor relative.
But let’s not canonize the complainant too quickly. Africa’s leaders arrive in style; the prophets of exclusion dressed in bespoke hypocrisy. They mount the podium with the gravity of saints and the diction of prophets, their speeches drenched in indignation. They speak of democracy while their citizens whisper of disappearances. They preach transparency, while their ministers audit the treasury with invisible ink. They invoke equality, while crushing it beneath imported boots.
How easily tyrants’ tongues curl around the word justice abroad! How quickly the melody turns to a growl when sung at home! These same men demand seats at the world’s high table but refuse to make room for their own people in the council of governance. They crave global democracy but govern like local gods.
They know the choreography well, fists raised in defiance of imperialism by day, arms wide open for foreign aid by night. They curse Western arrogance in English, French, and Portuguese, each syllable imported.
So, the speeches roll on, like a market of moral merchandise. Each nation hawks its virtue, each delegate packages indignation for applause. Resolutions are traded like cheap perfume, pleasant, transient, non-binding. The applause is generous; the outcomes, nonexistent.
This is democracy’s masquerade, where every mask claims sincerity and every dancer knows the rhythm of futility. Behind the applause lies the quiet industry of power, the deals struck in hotel suites, the promises bartered for silence, crumbs of recognition fed to smaller nations in exchange for compliance.
If irony were incense, the UNGA would be a perpetual shrine. Imagine: The Council that sends troops to Africa forbids Africa from commanding them. The same leaders who cannot light their streets lecture the world on sustainable energy. The same powers that armed yesterday’s wars now sell peace at a markup.
And somewhere in that hall, between the words justice and diplomacy, the truth quietly chokes on its own relevance.
So let us pray, since the UN enjoys the performance of prayer, that one day, equality may find a translator in that chamber;
that Africa’s rulers might learn democracy not just as a slogan but as a discipline; that the Security Council may one day remember the security of the voiceless.
Until then, the General Assembly remains what it is:
a ritual of rhetoric, a pilgrimage of pretenders where the world rehearses virtue in the language of vanity.
In the end, the UNGA is not a parliament but a mirror, reflecting the hypocrisies of its performers. The powerful strut in the glow of past victories; the powerless perform the theater of protest; and Africa, dressed in moral outrage, recites its lines with practiced despair.
The Assembly passes countless resolutions about peace, freedom, and climate action, none of which are binding, like a gym membership you never plan to use. It’s the world’s most expensive debate club, where the bullies don’t just talk over you; they bomb you, sanction you, or lecture you on governance from 40,000 feet.
The show ends, as always, in applause, amnesia, and air-conditioned futility. The world departs unchanged, speeches archived, hypocrisy rebroadcast next September.
Because, at the United Nations, as in too many African capitals, power only listens to its own echo. And that echo, like the Assembly itself, is loud, eloquent, and utterly empty. and utterly empty.
