联合国成立75周年：问题、挑战与质疑
As U.N. Turns 75, the Celebration Is Muted by Calamity and Conflict
RICK GLADSTONE
2020年9月17日
Worldwide contagion, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a warming planet — not to mention rising hunger, growing legions of refugees, xenophobic bombast from strongmen leaders and a new cold war between the United States and China.
全世界蔓延的感染，自大萧条以来最严重的经济危机和气候变暖——更不要提饥馑的加剧，越来越多的难民，强人领袖的疯狂排外和美中之间的新冷战。
The United Nations is about to celebrate its birth in 1945 from the ruins of World War II, although “celebrate” might seem an odd choice of word amid the long list of current global woes and the organization’s own challenges.
联合国即将庆祝其1945年在二战废墟中的诞生，尽管在一长串当前全球问题及其自身面临的挑战中，“庆祝”可能成了怪异的措辞。
So the marking of the anniversary will be muted, and not only because world leaders will be unable to gather in person to raise a glass — the pandemic has reduced the General Assembly beginning this week to virtual meetings. As the world body turns 75, it also faces profound questions about its own effectiveness and even its relevance.
因此，对这一诞辰的纪念将是静悄悄的，不仅因为世界各国领导人无法亲自聚在一起举杯——大流行让本周开始的联合国大会变成了虚拟会议。在这一世界机构成立75周年之际，它也面临着对其效力乃至地位的深刻质疑。
“The U.N. is weaker than it should be,” said Mary Robinson, a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and the first woman to become president of Ireland.
“联合国不应该这么弱，”前联合国人权事务高级专员、爱尔兰的首位女总统玛丽·罗宾逊(Mary Robinson)说。
When the United Nations was founded by the Allied victors, the goal was to avert another descent into another global apocalypse. And for all its shortcomings, the organization that Eleanor Roosevelt called “our greatest hope for future peace” has at least helped achieve that.
当同盟国的胜利者成立联合国之时，他们的目标是避免陷入另一场全球灾难。尽管有种种缺点，但这个被埃莉诺·罗斯福(Eleanor Roosevelt)称为“我们未来和平的最大希望”的组织至少帮助实现了这一目标。
As he looked ahead toward convening this year’s General Assembly, Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized the long view. The values embedded in the U.N. Charter, he said, have prevented “the scourge of a Third World War many had feared.”
当展望今年的联合国大会时，秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯(António Guterres)强调了长远的眼光。他说，写进《联合国宪章》的价值观阻止了“许多人担心的第三次世界大战的灾难”。
Still, the organization is struggling like perhaps never before.
尽管如此，这一机构可能从未像现在这样挣扎过。
While it is the leading provider of humanitarian aid, and U.N. peacekeepers operate in more than dozen unstable areas, the United Nations has been unable to bring an end to the protracted wars in Syria, Yemen or Libya. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly as old as the United Nations itself.
虽然它是人道主义援助的最主要提供者，而且联合国维和人员在十几个不稳定地区执行任务，但联合国一直未能结束在叙利亚、也门或利比亚旷日持久的战争。巴以冲突的历史几乎和联合国自身的历史一样悠久。
U.N. statistics show that the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has doubled over the past decade to 80 million. The number suffering acute hunger is expected to nearly double by year’s end to more than a quarter billion, with the first famines of the coronavirus era lurking at the world’s doorstep.
联合国数据显示，全球被迫流离失所的人数在过去十年里翻了一番，达到8000万人。新冠时代的第一批饥荒就潜伏在世界各国的家门口，预计到今年年底，遭受严重饥馑的人数将增加近一倍，超过2.5亿人。
Guterres’ entreaty for a global cease-fire to help combat the coronavirus has gone largely unheeded. His plea for contributions to a $10 billion emergency coronavirus response plan to help the neediest had, as of last week, been met with commitments totaling just a quarter of the goal. That response “barely justifies the description of ‘tepid,’ ” said Mark Lowcock, the top U.N. relief official.
古特雷斯恳请全球停火以帮助抗击冠状病毒，但基本无人理睬。他呼吁为一项100亿美元的冠状病毒紧急应对计划捐款，以帮助最需要帮助的人，但截至上周，承诺捐款额只有目标的四分之一。这样的反应“连‘不温不火’都算不上了”，联合国援助事务最高官员马克·洛科克(Mark Lowcock)说。
The United Nations, which has grown from 50 members 75 years ago to 193 members and a global staff of 44,000, was intended at its inception to provide a forum in which countries large and small believed they had a meaningful voice.
联合国从75年前的50个成员国发展到如今有193个成员国和4.4万名全球工作人员，它成立之初的目的是为了提供一个论坛，让各国可以不分大小，都相信自己的声音是有意义的。
But its basic structure gives little real power to the main body, the General Assembly, and the most to the World War II victors — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — with each wielding a veto on the 15-seat Security Council as permanent members. The council is empowered to impose economic sanctions and is the only U.N. entity permitted to deploy military force.
但其基本结构并没有赋予联合国大会这个主体机构多少实权，而是把最多的实权给了二战的战胜国——英国、中国、法国、俄罗斯和美国——这些常任理事国对安理会的15个理事国席位拥有否决权。安理会有权实施经济制裁，并且是唯一被允许部署军事力量的联合国实体。
No permanent member seems willing to alter the power structure. The outcome is chronic Security Council deadlocks on many issues, often pitting the United States against not only China and Russia but also against U.S. allies.
似乎没有一个常任理事国愿意改变这种权力结构。结果就导致安理会在许多问题上长期陷入僵局，往往使美国不仅与中国和俄罗斯对立，还与其盟友为敌。
It is not only on questions of war and cease-fires where the United Nations is struggling for results.
联合国不只是在战争和停火问题上难以取得成果。
The Sustainable Development Goals, 17 U.N. objectives aimed at eliminating inequities that include poverty, gender bias and illiteracy by 2030, are imperiled. Barbara Adams, chairwoman of the Global Policy Forum, a U.N. monitoring group, told a conference in July that the objectives were “seriously off track” even before the pandemic, according to PassBlue, a news site that covers the United Nations.
联合国那17个旨在2030年以前消除贫困、性别偏见和文盲等不平等现象的可持续发展目标(Sustainable Development Goals)已经岌岌可危。据报道联合国的新闻网站PassBlue称，联合国监督小组《全球政策论坛》(Global Policy Forum)主席芭芭拉·亚当斯(Barbara Adams)在7月的一次会议上表示，这些目标甚至在大流行出现之前就已经“严重偏离轨道”。
U.N. veterans say multilateralism — solving problems together, a tenet of the organization’s charter — increasingly collides with principles in the same charter emphasizing national sovereignty and nonintervention in a country’s internal affairs.
联合国资深人士都表示，多边主义——即共同解决问题这个联合国宪章的宗旨——日益与同一部宪章中强调的国家主权和不干涉内政的原则相冲突。
The result is often delays of aid or denial of U.N. access to humanitarian crises, whether in delivering supplies to displaced Syrians, investigating evidence of Rohingya massacres in Myanmar or helping sick children in Venezuela.
其结果往往是拖延援助或对联合国介入人道主义危机的拒绝，不管这些援助或介入是向流离失所的叙利亚人运送物资，调查缅甸罗辛亚人遭遇大屠杀的证据，还是救助委内瑞拉患病的儿童。
Carrie Booth Walling, a political-science professor at Albion College and an expert on U.N. humanitarian interventions, said the turning inward of many countries afflicted by the virus might bode badly for the United Nations and the diplomacy it embodies.
阿尔比安大学的政治学教授、联合国人道主义干预问题专家凯莉·布思·沃林(Carrie Booth Walling)表示，许多受病毒影响的国家开始向内转，对联合国及其象征的外交而言可能是个坏兆头。
“What is really frightening at this moment,” Walling said, is “the state of multilateralism in general, and whether the world’s governments and people will see the value of multilateral cooperation.”
“目前真正令人恐惧的是多边主义的总体状况，以及世界各国政府和人民能否看到多边合作的价值，”沃林说。
The ascendance of autocratic-minded leaders has presented further challenges.
有专制意识的领导人的上台带来了进一步挑战。
President Donald Trump has been a frequent U.N. critic, rejecting notions of global governance and complaining about what he sees as wasteful spending on a budget that totals roughly $9.5 billion annually, including $6.5 billion for peacekeeping operations.
特朗普总统经常批评联合国，他反对全球治理的概念，并不满于联合国每年大约95亿美元的预算（其中65亿美元用于维和行动），认为那是浪费。
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has called the U.N.’s Human Rights Council a “communist meeting place.” Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has railed against U.N. policy protecting refugees. President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has expressed fury over a U.N. human rights inquiry into his war on drugs.
巴西总统贾伊尔·博尔索纳罗(Jair Bolsonaro)称联合国人权理事会是“共产主义的会场”。匈牙利总理欧尔班·维克托(Viktor Orban)谴责联合国保护难民的政策。菲律宾总统罗德里戈·杜特地(Rodrigo Duterte)对联合国人权机构对其禁毒战争的调查表示愤怒。
Under Trump’s “America First” approach, the United States intends to withdraw from the World Health Organization, with Trump criticizing its coronavirus response and calling it a mouthpiece for China. Trump also has abandoned or slashed support for U.N. agencies, including the U.N. Population Fund, the Human Rights Council and the agency that aids Palestinians classified as refugees.
根据特朗普的“美国优先”方针，美国打算退出世界卫生组织，特朗普批评该组织对新冠病毒的应对，称其为中国的喉舌。特朗普还放弃或削减了对联合国机构的支持，其中包括联合国人口基金、人权理事会以及援助被列为难民的巴勒斯坦人的机构。
While the United States has been lashing out, China has maneuvered to assert more control at the United Nations, taking leadership positions in agencies that include the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the International Telecommunications Union and the Human Rights Council.
尽管美国一直在猛烈抨击，但中国在联合国采取了行动，在经济和社会事务部、国际电信联盟和人权理事会等机构担任领导职务，以争取更多控制权。
A May 2019 study, “People’s Republic of the United Nations,” by the Center for New American Security, a bipartisan research group, suggested China’s U.N. actions were part of its effort to redefine how such institutions are run, shifting away from Western concepts of democracy and human rights.
两党研究机构新美国安全中心(Center for New American Security) 2019年5月的研究报告《人民共和国的联合国》(People ‘s Republic of the United Nations)指出，中国在联合国的行动是为了重新定义此类机构的运作方式，使其偏离西方的民主和人权概念。
China’s U.N. reach extended deeper this year when Chinese candidates were chosen, over U.S. opposition, to lead the Food and Agriculture Organization, to join a panel that chooses investigators for the Human Rights Council, and to become a judge on a U.N.-affiliated tribunal that adjudicates Law of the Sea disputes.
今年中国在联合国的影响力进一步扩大，虽然遭到美国反对，但中国候选人当选粮食及农业组织领导人、加入人权理事会调查员遴选小组，并成为联合国下属的一个裁决海洋法争端的法庭的法官。
President Xi Jinping of China has exhorted subordinates “to take an active part in leading the reform of the global governance system.”
中国国家主席习近平敦促下属“积极参与引领全球治理体系改革”。
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, has insisted she is confronting the Chinese — telling a Fox News interviewer last month, for example, that she raises human rights issues in China “at every opportunity we have in the Security Council.”
美国驻联合国大使凯莉·克拉夫特(Kelly Craft)坚称她正在与中国人对抗。例如，她上个月在接受福克斯新闻(Fox News)采访时表示，她“利用安理会的一切机会”提出中国的人权问题。
Still, current and former U.N. officials say Trump’s isolationist behavior has hurt U.S. influence at the United Nations, even as the United States remains vital as the host country and biggest single contributor. They see an emboldened China asserting itself in contested areas of the South China Sea, suppressing dissent in Hong Kong, interning 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and lending aggressively to the needy countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
不过，现任和前任联合国官员说，特朗普的孤立主义行为损害了美国在联合国的影响力，尽管美国作为东道国和最大的单一捐助国仍然至关重要。他们看到了中国的胆子大了起来，在南海争议地区坚持自己的主张，在香港压制异议，在新疆拘禁100万维吾尔穆斯林，并向亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲的贫困国家大举放贷。
“If the United States pulls its cards out of the game, that leaves more scope for China,” said Edward Mortimer, who was the chief speechwriter for former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “Now China is behaving in an incredibly heavy-handed and provocative way, and has a lot of countries worried.”
“如果美国撤出自己的牌，就给中国留下了更多空间，”前联合国秘书长科菲·安南(Kofi Annan)的首席演讲撰稿人爱德华·莫蒂默(Edward Mortimer)说。“现在，中国的行为极度强硬而挑衅，让很多国家感到担忧。”
