Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Lewis

“The United Nations has a lot of capacity on the ground” is the kind of sentence a seasoned diplomat uses when the real message can’t be spoken plainly: we could be doing more, but politics is in the way. Stephen Lewis, a politician shaped by the UN ecosystem, reaches for a phrase that sounds managerial and reassuring while quietly indicting the bottleneck above the field level.

“Capacity” is technocratic code. It signals logistics, staff, local partnerships, supply chains, institutional memory - the unglamorous machinery of humanitarian work. “On the ground” does two things at once: it invokes credibility (real people in real places, not committees in New York) and it draws a contrast with the arena where decisions get stalled. The subtext is that the UN’s problem isn’t simply competence; it’s permission. Mandates, funding, access, and Security Council paralysis can neutralize even the best-equipped operation.

The intent, then, is strategic reassurance with a pointed nudge. Lewis isn’t praising the UN in the abstract; he’s defending the idea that multilateral institutions are not inherently feckless. If outcomes are failing - in a conflict zone, during a famine, amid a public health emergency - it’s not because the organization lacks tools, but because those tools are being left in the box.

It’s also a subtle appeal to public imagination: stop treating the UN as a debating society. There are skilled operators already positioned; the question is whether states will let them work, and whether the world will pay for it.