The interview with Sandro Calvani, diplomat and president of the Scientific Council of the Giuseppe Toniolo Institute of International Peace Law, was conducted by Francesco Anfossi and published in the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana on 24 October 2025.
Translated with Deepl.com – original in Italian PDF
Eighty years after the birth of the United Nations, amid wars, sovereignty issues and crises of international legality, diplomat Sandro Calvani defends the original spirit of the San Francisco Charter: ‘It is not the UN that has failed, but the countries that betray the common rules. Peace and justice are reborn every day, in the faces of children who smile in the same language’.
by Francesco Anfossi
Eighty years after its birth, the UN seems like a tired giant, often ignored by the powerful and powerless in the face of the massacres in Gaza or Russian aggression in Ukraine. Yet there are those who, after a lifetime spent within the United Nations, continue to believe in its original mission: to build peace and defend human dignity. Sandro Calvani, diplomat, economist and university professor, one of Italy’s most authoritative experts on international cooperation, is one of them. For over thirty years, he has directed programmes for the UN and other global agencies in Asia, Africa and Latin America, dealing with human development, poverty alleviation, justice and drug trafficking. Today, he is a consultant for international organisations and the author of numerous essays on the future of global governance. He is also president of the Scientific Council of the G. Toniolo Institute of the Catholic University for International Peace Law. For readers who wish to explore the topics covered in the interview in greater depth, two of his recent books are useful: Senza False Frontiere (Without False Frontiers, AVE 2021) and Protopia (Città Nuova, 2025). We retraced with him the history and challenges of the Glass Palace, from its inception in 1945 to the crises of the present, amid wars, sovereignties and new hopes for peace.
The United Nations seems to have lost much of its authority and prestige in the face of old and growing powers, as we have seen in the Gaza affair.
‘For eighty years, the United Nations – as should be clear from its name – has been an association of nations that wish to be united for the good of all. Therefore, like any group dynamic in the world, they function to the extent that members respect the rules they have set for themselves. Attributing weakness to the UN system is like disqualifying the game of Monopoly, poker, football or a condominium simply because some of the members do not respect the rules.”
Despite numerous complaints, commission reports and the definition of genocide, the Israeli government has never been stopped, thanks to the support of the United States.
“On the most pressing issues of the moment, such as human rights, Palestine, Ukraine and drug trafficking, in recent decades less than a dozen governments have decided to do as they please, disregarding the rules that were agreed upon and signed, and not respecting the will and resolutions voted on by 150 or 160 other countries that have chosen the right solution. Those countries that abandon inclusion, law and diplomacy hide behind their alleged popular will or need for ‘national security’. In reality, they call it ‘my country comes first’ supremacism or ‘we don’t take orders from other countries’ sovereignty, but these are forms of racism and imperialism. In the face of bullies, we should at least all agree to call a spade a spade. Those who renounce the truth must know that justice and peace cannot exist in falsehood.
Even UN justice seems to be nullified by the arrogance of the powers, starting with the US and Israel. This is despite very strict orders from the International Court of Justice. Are we witnessing the end of international law, which is increasingly less respected?
International law remains present and authoritative because no one has yet proposed a better system. But it must be recognised that the effectiveness of its authority is diminishing because the bullies, instead of respecting the referees, want to forcibly reject impartial decisions. Instead of accepting warnings and expulsions, they expel the referees. If one or more nations deny genocide, climate change, the effectiveness of vaccines, human rights, gender rights and migration rights, they do not change the facts, they only hide them and make it impossible to govern global common goods.”
The new global balance of power – with the rise of powers such as China, India and Putin’s Russia – is changing the internal structure of the UN. Is real reform of the organisation conceivable?
“The 2025 UN Assembly voted by a large majority in favour of the proposed reform, the result of more than a decade of consultations, called UN80. Italy has made a major contribution to this process of transformation. The new UN that will be born in 2025 has shed many of the signs of its old age. But the challenge remains the same as at the beginning: the goodwill of member countries. Countries that oppose and cancel their funding, after two years of such sterile and destructive opposition, will lose their voting rights, just like in a condominium assembly.”
You have worked in the field for years, including on UN programmes against poverty and drugs. In your opinion, which UN agencies are really working today and which ones are merely surviving due to bureaucratic inertia?
The most effective UN programmes and specialised agencies have been those that enjoyed broad consensus, participation and goodwill among member countries, such as the WHO, FAO, International Organisation for Migration, humanitarian programmes such as the World Food Programme, UNICEF and UNHCR. Together, these programmes have freed billions of people from poverty, ignorance and disease, and today they are very grateful to the UN system for saving them.”
As a former senior UN official, do you think real change is possible, or will the victorious powers of 1945 continue to block any progress? In a fragmented world, where nationalism and indifference are on the rise, what remains of the original spirit of ‘ ‘ of the San Francisco Charter? Is it still possible to believe in the United Nations as the ‘conscience of the world’?
‘Contrary to the aspirations of the UN Charter of San Francisco, the hyper-market and hypo-democracies are creating an era of hyper-conflicts. But eight billion people certainly have a collective intelligence and a sense of common humanity, which are manifested in the rebirth of networks of information, education and active citizenship for the common good throughout the world in order to overcome hyper-conflicts. Especially in Asia, which alone has more population and resources than the rest of the world combined, a new willingness for dialogue and tolerance can be glimpsed. The younger generations are aware of the devastating impact of inequality in wealth, power and opportunity, which a few hyper-capitalists would like to consolidate in order to rule the future of humanity alone and to their own advantage. But thanks to modern technologies and the disruptive power of authenticity and fraternity, the founding ideas for a future of hyper-democracy have already been conceived and articulated in humanist and solidarity commitments, endorsed by religions and scientists.
Are you optimistic about the future of the Glass Palace?
The conscience and hope of the world can be temporarily suppressed, even with great abuses against millions of people, but they cannot be extinguished forever; they are always reborn in the daily commitment of billions of human beings. I have seen them at work on the streets of the world’s suburbs. Their hope and conscience to unite the destinies of nations in a future of peace, development and justice can be seen on the faces of billions of children. They all smile in the same language; that smile is the new UN flag, and it will prevail with the same spirit as St Francis, the one from Assisi, not just the one from California.
