Is the United Nations still relevant?

The UN's relevance is hotly debated — I'll check the latest evidence on what it still achieves and where it's falling short.

Is the United Nations still relevant? The answer is contested - most experts say yes, but that its relevance is increasingly under threat and conditional on reform.

At 80 years old in 2025-2026, the UN is described as at one of its most vulnerable moments, with many member nations flouting rules and weakening support.

Why many argue it IS still relevant

1. It remains the only universal forum.
The UN has brought 193 countries together, built trust among them, and brought them together to find solutions to common and shared challenges. President of the General Assembly Annalena Baerbock said at the close of the 2025 high-level debate that if high-level week is any indication, the United Nations is still relevant, and that this house is fulfilling that purpose – the United Nations is still relevant.

As one analysis put it, its leadership should push for the permanent five members of the Security Council (P5) to engage constructively because without sustained deconfliction among the P5, the U.N. cannot function as a system of collective security, and its core purpose for which it was created - preventing great-power confrontation from escalating into World War III - remains vital.

2. Norm-setting and law: Achievements cited include:

3. Humanitarian and development work continues:
In 2024 the UN helped mobilize $25 billion to enable life-saving assistance to reach 116 million people across 77 countries. On 29 December 2025 the UN and US signed a $2 billion humanitarian funding agreement for 17 crisis-hit countries. In 2025 the Security Council also extended mandates of eight out of eleven peacekeeping operations.

4. Irreplaceable for global public goods: As Assistant Secretary-General Navid Hanif argued: Is there any powerful country that can fight climate change on its own? Not a single country. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set up in 1988 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) created the permanent forum for climate negotiations, and multilateral solutions for global public goods are absolutely essential.

Why its relevance is questioned

1. Security Council paralysis and the veto.
The UN's enduring relevance and structural impotence are as apparent as ever. The Security Council remains paralysed by great power vetoes. The UN Security Council is powerless to address threats if just one great power disagrees.

Delegates in the General Assembly have demanded overhaul of the veto amid alarm over its use to enable impunity and obstruct cooperation. Member States broadly agreed on the need to modernize the 15-member body to maintain the relevance of the United Nations in the twenty-first century. Vetoes are lamentedin the face of massive human suffering in Gaza and Ukraine.

Examples often cited:

The General Assembly has occasionally used "Uniting for Peace" resolutions to bypass the Council, such as 141 countries condemning Russia's invasion in 2022 and 153 calling for a Gaza ceasefire in 2023, but these are non-binding.

2. Failures in peacekeeping and conflict resolution
From Srebrenica in 1995 where Dutch peacekeepers failed to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boysto failures in Rwanda, Somalia and Angola due to limited powers given to operations, and unresolved conflicts in Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Ethiopia.

3. Budget and political crisis
Last year was among the darkest in UN history, gripped by a budgetary crisis and unable to respond to catastrophic wars in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza, spending much of 2025 focused on internal reform. The US has withdrawn from WHO and the UN Human Rights Council and is creating alternatives like the US-led Board of Peace seen as an effort to offer a U.S.-dominated alternative to a languishing U.N. Security Council.

4. Outdated 1945 structure
The UN is increasingly out of step with geopolitics: permanent members reflect WWII power, continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, India and Indonesia demonstrates failure to reflect changing balance. Institutions were designed in 1945 and are a poor fit for systemic challenges such as climate change, AI, and extreme inequality.

> This illustrates a core conundrum: it opens the possibility of global co-operation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests.

Bottom line

The UN is rarely coherent or independent — a failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.

For supporters, abolishing it would remove the only global table where rivals can talk, set human-rights and environmental norms, coordinate aid for 100+ million people, and authorize peacekeeping. For critics, without Security Council reform — especially limiting the veto — and renewed commitment from major powers, it risks becoming a humanitarian agency that cannot fulfill its primary Charter mandate: to maintain international peace and security.

Much of the debate ahead of the 2026 Secretary-General succession is whether the UN must look outward and refocus on great-power diplomacy rather than inward on budgetary discipline alone to stay relevant.