Our View: The UN framework has proved a lost cause for Cyprus
The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Cyprus and head of Unficyp, Khassim Diagne, on Thursday briefed the UN Security Council on the content of the UNSG’s two reports about Cyprus, the Cyprus News Agency reported. Diagne made no comment about the outcome of the consultations, saying “we are still at a premature stage,” said the agency.
In his report on Unficyp, Antonio Guterres recommended the renewal of the force’s mandate for another year, while in the report on his mission of Good Offices he said the informal meetings in a broader contact held in 2025 and the meetings of the two leaders “demonstrated that there is a new moment of opportunity to move forward on the Cyprus issue”. This charade would not have been complete without Cyprus’ foreign ministry expressing dissatisfaction, as always, about the “equal distances” the UNSG kept between the two sides.
Nothing illustrates the futility of the UN’s efforts better than these annual reports, which are little more than fodder for the hackneyed rhetoric of the two sides. Even the UNSG recognised that these reports were complete waste of time and reduced the drafts from twice to once a year. This year spending will also be reduced. For this year the budget of the Special Advisor’s office has been reduced by $1.2 million with eight posts being scrapped including that of the Special Advisor which has remained vacant since the departure of Espen Barth Eide in 2017.
Implicitly, this is a long overdue admission of the UN’s irrelevance in Cyprus, an irrelevance that only the Greek Cypriot political establishment refuses to see, because it values the sense of security – real or false – cultivated by the presence of Unficyp soldiers along the Green Line. Unficyp has been here for so long – more than 60 years – some assume it will stay forever, guarding the buffer zone and maintaining the status quo.
This may be the reason the government takes the line that the search for a solution must be led and facilitated by the UN, despite its unblemished record of failure. President Nikos Christodoulides still campaigns for the resumption of talks within the framework of the UN Security Council resolutions, as all his predecessors have done for the last 50-plus years. After such a record of failure, should we not be looking for another method or format, however difficult, for reaching an agreement with the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey? The UN framework has proved a lost cause.
There is a broader issue we should consider. Since the election of President Donald Trump, the UN has been completely marginalised and even the semblance of the rule-based international order, which needed the backing of the United States, has disappeared. The complete irrelevance of the UN has been emphasised by a series of events – the US capture of Nikolas Maduro in Venezuela, the bombing of Iran, the Gaza ceasefire and, most recently, Trump’s effort to take control of Greenland, ignoring the objections being expressed by the EU. The EU, which we want to be involved in the Cyprus peace process, has also been marginalised by Trump’s actions.
The reality is that neither the UN nor the EU can ensure there will be a settlement based on the principles of international law, human rights within any particular framework. Perhaps the time has come for us to consider a new approach such as departing from the UN framework and making the Cyprus peace efforts part of the Greece-Turkey dialogue. There is no guarantee either would agree, but a radically new approach is necessary if we sincerely want some settlement both sides can live with and which would ensure our long-term security. We cannot afford to stay at the mercy of our powerful neighbour in an era in which the powerful obey no rules.