UN SECURITY COUNCIL: Failure to act in the face of atrocities

2020 was another year in which it might have been better if there was no Security Council at all, given its standing as a hamstrung arena of performative power plays between big states. Its repeated failures to act in the face of devastating conflicts such as those in Syria and Yemen sadly no longer came as a surprise. In February 2021, it took the UN Security Council lengthy negotiations even to condemn the Myanmar coup, through a form of words that avoided calling it a coup.