Is the UN a failed institution - failing to live up to its founding ideals, failing to stop genocides, failing to face down dictators, failing to deal with its own corruption and incompetence?

Yes, says a new documentary, U.N. Me, screened at the Frontline Club in London this week.

Its assault is wide-ranging but focuses on Iran’s development of nuclear weapons (blamed on the International Atomic Energy Agency), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad (who it takes as a Holocaust denier and hypocrite), the domination of the organisation’s human rights bodies by rights-denying countries such as Sudan, the corruption of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, allowing the Rwandan genocide to occur (for which it blames Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan) and for the failing to stop mass murder in Darfur, and the sexual crimes of more than a dozen peace-keeping operations.

Along the way it mocks the UN’s inability even to define terrorism while it is supposed to be fighting it, the world body’s unwillingness to investigate its own shooting of civilians in Haiti, the shambles of a huge international conference on discrimination, and a “let’s adjourn for lunch” mentality in the face of crisis.

Much of it is serious: indeed, much of it is true. Some of it is cheap and silly, with filmmakers Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff trying to do a Michael Moore, but without his flair and imagination. A couple of Ali G-type interviews with diplomats are particularly irritating. (Horowitz’s defence: such bureaucrats never gave a straight answer so a straight interview is pointless. In addition, “I leaned a little bit to the satirical for entertainment purposes. I’m a slave to the market.”)

It’s also very much a US film, aimed at US audiences. Nothing wrong with that, but the result is that some of the film’s assumptions will grate on audiences outside the US. This was reflected in the rather hostile response from some members of the Frontline audience, when Horowitz was accused of perpetrating a “US-Republican pro-Israeli critique of the UN – a piece of propaganda”.

His reply was that yes, there was no criticism of Israeli or US policies and that yes, he had concentrated on Iran, North Korea and Sudan, but that on any scale of wrong-doing the latter group of countries were far more culpable than Israel or the US.

My concern is not with the criticisms of the UN: a back-to-the-wall, deny-all-allegations approach to right-wing Republican attacks is no longer helpful: the UN is an ailing institution in need of treatment. My concern is that the film is an indiscriminate rag-bag of criticisms that do not give the whole story: it misses entirely the point that the UN can rarely do more than particular powerful governments allow. In addition, the film’s attitude is based on a post-second world war, US-centric view of a handful of victorious countries, rather than on today’s multipolar, multi-ethnic, multicultural world.

It has a black or white, right or wrong vision. The UN, says Horowitz, wasn’t intended to be a universal organisation: it was meant for those who uphold its declared values. That’s why, when asked after the screening how the UN could be reformed, Horowitz suggested it should begin by throwing out one tyrannical country – presumably Iran or North Korea – in order to frighten the others into better behaviour.

“These countries get a lot of prestige and money out of the UN,” he said. “Throwing them out a real threat. It would be transformative.” Then rebuilding could begin.

So, sometimes annoying, sometimes meretricious, occasionally devastatingly spot-on. Horowitz wants the film to make people feel upset and be provoked into activity. I think the issue of the UN is too important and too complex for that to be a constructive recipe. First, we need a lot more understanding than this film purveys. If, however, the UN continues to fail to produce leaders capable of addressing the organisation’s failings, gut reactions and ill-considered responses is what we’ll get and what we’ll get will be worse than what we have.

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