Is the United Nations still relevant?

This is a substantive debate question rather than something requiring current facts lookup, but let me search for some recent perspectives and events that bear on this question to give you a well-rounded answer.This is a genuinely contested question, and the current debate (especially around late 2026) gives a pretty clear picture of both sides.

The case that it's struggling with relevance:

The UN's core security mandate looks badly weakened. Security Council paralysis has become chronic — in 2024, permanent members cast eight vetoes, the highest since 1986, and in 2025 the Council adopted only 44 resolutions, the lowest since 1991. Deep divisions prevented meaningful responses to Gaza and to conflicts in Myanmar, Sudan and Ukraine.

The institution is also in genuine financial crisis. The United States owes roughly $1.5 billion in unpaid assessments, arrears that have since climbed above $2 billion, while China has run hundreds of millions behind. Secretary-General António Guterres has warned bluntly of a "race to bankruptcy," proposing a 15 percent cut to the UN's regular budget for 2026 and the elimination of roughly 2,600 posts. The US has confirmed this cut directly: "We cut the UN budget for the first time ever, slashing it by 15 percent in 2026 and eliminating more than 4,000 positions from the UN bureaucracy."

There's also a structural legitimacy problem. The Security Council still reflects 1945, not 2026: The UN now counts 193 member states, nearly four times the original number, and roughly 70 percent of the Security Council's agenda now concerns Africa, yet Africa does not hold a single permanent seat on that Council. Guterres himself called this indefensible: "A 21st century Security Council without permanent African seats is unjust and indefensible."

Perhaps most tellingly, rival power structures are emerging outside the UN system entirely — the launch earlier this month of a new U.S.-led Board of Peace is a fairly clear effort to offer a U.S.-dominated alternative to a languishing U.N. Security Council.

The case that it remains relevant:

Even sharp critics distinguish between the UN's political/security failures and its operational value. Former US Ambassador Susan Rice put it bluntly: "its relevance can't be dismissed totally. I would say it is barely still relevant, most importantly because its operational humanitarian agencies are delivering lifesaving assistance to millions and millions around the world."

Beyond humanitarian work, beyond its responsibility for international peace and security, the UN continues to play a vital role in the humanitarian sphere, and over the decades has played an important role in promoting economic and social development, acting as first-responder in humanitarian crises, helping refugees, protecting child rights and setting global norms on issues ranging from human rights to climate change. Most of the UN's specialised agencies do a stellar job in multiple areas, and the UN remains indispensable in several of its functional activities.

The General Assembly also still functions as the one place where virtually every country talks to every other country: more than eight decades on from its founding, the UN General Assembly remains the place where the UN's 193 Member States come together to debate the defining challenges of the day, from war and peace – to development, climate change and human rights.

My take

The honest answer is "it depends which UN you mean." As a mechanism for stopping great-power wars, the UN has rarely worked as designed — it was built on P5 cooperation that often doesn't exist, and that's increasingly exposed as true today. But as a humanitarian delivery system, a forum for near-universal diplomacy, a norm-setter, and a coordinator on things like disease, climate, and refugees, it still does things no other institution can replicate at the same scale. Guyana captured this tension well at this year's General Assembly: "This is why we must not abandon multilateralism because it is imperfect; we must renew it because humanity still needs it."

So: not obsolete, but in real crisis — financially, structurally, and in terms of great-power buy-in — and whether it adapts (Security Council reform, budget overhaul, a new Secretary-General taking office in 2027) will determine whether "barely relevant" becomes "increasingly irrelevant" or something more durable.