Mary Robinson Quotes

...the first casualty (of this crisis) had been the United Nations. It would need an immense effort, an almost superhuman effort, to restore the prestige of that organization

Let us face it, the U.N. has failed. It has failed in its mission to promote world peace.

Well, I think everybody is frustrated by the finances of the U.N. and the inability to solve problems of war and peace.

There is, and there will be, an increasing demand for a principled global security provider, for a superpower that believes in multilateralism and cooperation.

The time has come to recognize the United Nations for the anti-American, anti-freedom organization that it has become. The time has come for us to cut off all financial help, withdraw as a member, and ask the United Nations to find headquarters location outside the United States that is

It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.

The U.N. is capable of endless process and mindless psychobabble, but as far as getting the job done on the ground, I just don't see them doing it.

The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.

The interests of the United States are better served by demanding reform and seeing that reform takes place than by removing our influence from the UN.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.

Attempts to settle crises by unilateral sanctions outside the framework of U.N. Security Council decisions threaten international peace and stability. Such attempts are counterproductive and contradict the norms and principles of international law.

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail.

The utter incompetence of the U.N. is literally incomprehensible.

I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction between being a hegemonic power on the one hand and functioning multilaterally on the other.

The United Nations remains our most important global actor. These days we are continuously reminded of the enormous responsibility of the Security Council to uphold international peace and stability.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.

The United Nations has a lot of capacity on the ground.

The U.N.'s impartiality allows it to negotiate and operate in some of the toughest places in the world. And time and again, studies have shown that U.N. peacekeeping is far more effective and done with far less money than what any government can do on its own.

If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world's people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will?

I look forward to strengthening the U.S.-U.N. partnership and working closely with Secretary of State Kerry towards our shared goals of peace, development, and human rights.

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.

The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.

The U. N. is like a company that can't market its products and whose board members put their own interests first.