International relations expert Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso has said although the United Nations (UN) remains relevant to world peace, its current structure may lead to a Third World War as the international body marks UN Day today, October 24.

24th October has been celebrated as United Nations Day since 1948. In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly recommended that the day be observed by Member States as a public holiday.

Speaking in an interview with Class News’ Regina Borley Bortey in an interview on the relevance of the UN, Dr Antwi-Danso said the failure of the UN to ensure world peace will persist if the structures of the world body are not restructured.

“The structure of the UN is more state centric and the permanent five with the veto does not augur well for the UN to be very effective because since the inception of the UN, a lot of things have happened. We didn’t have a lot of interference from non-state actors like [terrorists] and other non-state actors who have very much influence in the world and who may cause war here or there, but the UN has not been structured to deal with such a situation and, therefore, you have a foundation whose super structure is heavier than the foundation and that is what we are seeing with the UN,” he stated adding: “Until we restructure the UN, we are going to see these things that stand outside the remit of the UN which will force international agents like members of the UN like United States, Russia, and other states to use unilateral means to solve world problems. We see what is happening in Syria, we saw what happened in Iraq [and] Libya – all these things were beyond the remit of the UN and, therefore, some countries decided to take things into their own hands, and that is what may bring about the Third World War.”

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organisation to promote international co-operation. It was established on 24 October, 1945, after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict and also to replace the ineffective League of Nations. The UN has 193 member states.