Is the United Nations still relevant?

Is the UN still relevant? I'll gather current perspectives on its role and challenges.

The United Nations is still relevant - but its relevance is increasingly contested and conditional, at what many observers call one of its most vulnerable moments in 80 years.

Why the UN is still considered relevant

Supporters argue no other organization can replace its universal legitimacy and scale:

1. Humanitarian and development work at scale: The UN remains indispensable, and expectations placed on it have expanded. In 2024 it helped mobilize $25 billion of a $50 billion appeal, enabling life-saving humanitarian assistance to reach 116 million people in urgent need across 77 countries and territories, including programmes in the Horn of Africa, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen.

Its Peacebuilding Fund allocated over $116 million to support national peace plans in 32 countries and territories, and in 2025 the Security Council extended mandates of eight out of eleven peacekeeping operations.

The Secretary-General's annual report argued "despite enormously trying times – indeed, precisely because of them – we can and must keep pushing for the better world that we know is within reach", and specifically that "it is precisely in such a context that the role of the United Nations becomes even more relevant".

At the close of the 2024 General Debate, General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said if high-level week is any indication, the United Nations is still relevant, later adding that the house is fulfilling that purpose – the United Nations is still relevant.

Other core functions often cited:

Why its relevance is questioned

Critics point to a growing gap between the UN's founding promise of collective security and its performance:

> The United Nations came into existence 80 years ago... is the organization now at one of its most vulnerable moments?

1. Security Council paralysis: The world is seeing "the highest number of conflicts since the founding of the United Nations", yet the Council has often been unable to act.

The United Nations enters 2026 at a moment when global disorder and institutional constraints converge, placing unprecedented pressure on how multilateral governance is exercised.

Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned:

> “The Security Council’s ongoing failure to properly function constitutes the most egregious cause,” he said, highlighting the repeated use of veto by permanent members “to shield themselves, their allies and their proxies from accountability.”

Without meaningful reform, he warned the UN "risks lurching towards either collapse or irrelevance".

The veto system has often stalled action and sparked criticism, while membership does not reflect today's world and developing countries are underrepresented.

2. Inability to stop major wars: In 2025 the UN was described as "Gripped by a budgetary crisis and unable to respond to catastrophic wars in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza". The launch of a new U.S.-led Board of Peace was seen as a fairly clear effort to offer a U.S.-dominated alternative to a languishing U.N. Security Council.

3. Funding and legitimacy crisis: 2024 was the deadliest year on record for UN staff and humanitarian workers, and the next Secretary-General will assume office at a time of unprecedented strain, including a deepening funding crisis that is already shrinking the UN’s capacity to deliver essential services.

The reform debate

Almost all agree reform is needed if relevance is to be preserved. The UN80 Initiative is described as a reform effort to modernize how the organization operates rather than a grand redesign.

Analysts argue that to stay relevant in 2026, the U.N. must become less inward-looking and more strategically relevant, and that without sustained deconfliction among the P5, the U.N. cannot function as a system of collective security.

Key reform proposals include:

> “Without a Security Council fit for purpose, the world is in grave danger.”

Bottom line

Is the UN still relevant? Yes, in the sense that no other institution provides its universal forum, humanitarian reach, peacekeeping deployments, and norm-setting for climate, health, development and human rights. In daily operations for millions of people, it remains, in the Center on International Cooperation's words, indispensable.

Is it effective as a collective security system as envisioned in 1945? Increasingly, no - without reform of the Security Council and renewed political and financial commitment from major powers, many experts warn it risks, in Ban Ki-moon's phrase, irrelevance or collapse.

Its future relevance will therefore depend less on whether the institution is needed, and more on whether member states - especially the P5 - allow it to function.