The UN has failed.
Now it’s our turn

COP25, the so-called Climate Summit, is over.

Yesterday, at the IFEMA venue in Madrid, the curtain was lowered on this high-budget tragicomedy.

For two weeks we have been able to see how, under the premise of uniting countries in the fight against climate change and the protection of the environment, the UN has consummated its 25th failure.

So much so that, despite the official end of the COP being yesterday, the inability of the leaders to reach an agreement in these two weeks has prolonged the negotiations until today, Saturday.

Leaders need to write a document that everyone can sign. After all, written words mean nothing without action.

Those who enjoy symbols will have noticed the irony that Friday the 13th was the day chosen to conclude this parody.

Because it must be really bad luck that we always end up voting for leaders incapable of achieving anything more than symbolic agreements, superficial measures and promises for the future that are never fulfilled.

Or maybe it’s not bad luck. Let us remember that many of those who have been making decisions and influencing this summit have not been voted on by anyone.

Neither the polluting companies that have taken advantage of the event to greenwash their image, nor the dictatorships of China, Iran or Saudi Arabia, among others, who have not stopped obstructing negotiations.

You have to be very foolish to believe that any of them will go to these summits with a desire to change anything that does not benefit their own greed, especially when we recently learned that C02 emissions again beat their record in 2018 and are not expected to decrease between now and 2030.

But let’s look again at the calendar. Because yesterday was not just any Friday the 13th and, as someone once said, “those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it”.

United? Nations Organization

On another Friday, December 13th, in 1946, a newly created United Nations Organization approved the inclusion of Rwanda, then a colony under Belgian control, in the Trusteeship Council.

This council had been created with the aim of monitoring the administration of the colonial territories included in it and ensuring that the foreign governments responsible for its administration took steps to prepare them for future self-government and eventual independence.

This did not prevent the Belgian government from continuing its policies of ethnic segregation, increasing the differences between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes and spurring hatred between them to benefit their colonial interests.

Two days earlier, on December 11th, the UN had recognised the crime of genocide as a crime under international law, which its member countries undertook to prevent and punish.

Several decades later, in 1994, the horror was unleashed and for three months more than 800,000 people were massacred in the Rwandan genocide. Despite having information about the massacre planned by the Hutu forces, the UN did nothing to prevent it.

Calling things by their names

That words have power is obvious, language shapes our vision of reality and has historically been used as a force for change, a weapon of war and a tool of peace.

Changing the way we call something can change people’s perception of it. But no matter how much something changes its name, its true nature remains the same.

That is why replacing the failed League of Nations with a so-called “United Nations” did not change the fact that its members were anything but united, just as justifying its existence as “the protection of human rights and the pursuit of peace” has not prevented its member countries from violating human rights numerous times or declaring war ever since.

7 million people die each year from environmental pollution, according to WHO reports. Millions of people lose their homes and thousands of people die each year from climate change, according to UN data.

As in Rwanda, the leaders of the “United Nations” have known about the situation for a long time and the energy companies have known about it even before.

Maybe now you’ll see why the Climate Summit is nothing but a bad joke.

We already know the consequences of waiting for solutions to come from them, now it is up to us.