Is the United Nations still relevant?

Is the UN Still Relevant?

This is a genuinely contested question, and current events give ammunition to both critics and defenders. Here's a balanced picture based on where things stand right now:

The Case Against: Paralysis and Dysfunction

The Security Council—the body meant to enforce collective security—looks increasingly broken. The United Nations Security Council faces a deepening crisis of effectiveness and legitimacy, as its structure, centred around five permanent members with veto powers, is increasingly unable to address today's conflicts. The numbers back this up: the exercise of the veto has continued to increase, with the seven vetoed draft resolutions in 2024 being the most since 1986. In 2025, there were four vetoes: two by the US on a draft resolution on the war in Gaza, and two by Russia on amendments to a draft resolution on Ukraine.

This paralysis is playing out on the world's worst crises. Republic of the Congo, Gaza, Myanmar, across much of Northern Africa, Sudan and Ukraine reveal the Council's limited effectiveness. The frustration has reached a boiling point—just this week, Turkish President Erdogan called for the veto mechanism to be abolished, saying "Let us move from a UN model that protects only five members to a mechanism that encompasses all members."

Financially, the institution is also strained. 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—prompting Secretary-General António Guterres to warn of a "race to bankruptcy" and propose a 15 percent cut to the UN's regular budget for 2026. One analysis last year noted the UN was 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 instead.

Structural critiques go deeper than just the P5 veto. As one recent piece argues, a body that devotes 70 percent of its security agenda to Africa while denying Africa a permanent voice is not just unjust, it is operationally dysfunctional.

The Case For: Still the Only Game in Town

Despite this, most serious analysts stop short of declaring the UN irrelevant—they argue reform is needed, not abandonment. One recent commentary put it starkly: after cataloguing the UN's failures, it asks readers to imagine the institution dissolves tomorrow—what actually happens? First, humanitarian collapse... The broader point is that these failures are not reasons to walk away—they are reasons reform is urgent and non-negotiable.

Even skeptics of Security Council reform acknowledge the body still has some function. As Richard Gowan points out, the council remains a place where compromise is possible, including on the big issues. There's also been an interesting shift where elected, non-permanent members have started pushing back against P5 gridlock: there's a growing sense of identity among the E10 members, who, in recent years, have demonstrated the ability to collaborate to try to break impasses on difficult issues.

There's also a historical framing worth noting—the UN's founders explicitly built in great-power dominance as a feature, not a bug: this was set up expressly to prevent the UN from being able to take action against the major powers, but also to allow them to act as a balance to each other's ambitions. This system only works, however, when the P5 agree to abide by the rules—which is precisely what's breaking down now.

My Take

The UN isn't "relevant" in the sense of being able to stop major-power wars—it was never really designed to do that when a P5 member is a direct party to the conflict. Where it remains genuinely useful is in the vast unglamorous work critics tend to overlook: humanitarian aid coordination, peacekeeping in conflicts where the P5 do agree, refugee assistance, health/development programs (WHO, UNICEF, WFP), and as a forum where 193 countries can at least talk to each other. The Security Council specifically looks close to obsolete for great-power conflicts; the broader UN system is still doing load-bearing work that would be catastrophic to lose overnight. Whether it's "relevant" may depend less on the institution itself and more on whether major powers—especially the P5—choose to use it, ignore it, or actively undermine it.