Is the United Nations still relevant?

Is the UN still relevant? I'll gather the latest on its role and challenges to give you a balanced answer.

Is the United Nations still relevant? Short answer: Yes, but not in the way its founders envisioned in 1945, and its current form is widely seen as unsustainable.

The UN in 2026 is best understood as two different institutions: "one a gridlocked political body, and the other a network of agencies doing 'real, important work in the field'". Its relevance today is selective: "It works where great-power interests align or where they don't care. It fails where they clash directly. It works on technical problems. It fails on political ones. It keeps people alive. It doesn't keep the peace".

Why It Is Still Relevant

1. Near-universal legitimacy and diplomatic infrastructure
The UN has 193 member states. With only a few exceptions, its "more than 190 member states, with only a few exceptions, are sending representatives from across the world to New York City for the 80th session" of the General Assembly. The 81st session opened on 8 September 2026 under the theme "Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All".

As one analysis notes: "If turning up is what matters, then the sheer popularity of the forum with world leaders is a clear indicator that the United Nations is widely viewed to be politically relevant and an important platform for shaping international discourse".

The UN provides a permanent venue "where adversaries can talk without formally recognizing each other". As former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld said, the UN "was not created to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell".

Its universal character, institutional capacities, implementation muscle, and broad-based legitimacy "are irreplaceable in a fractured world".

Global public opinion supports this view: "Most publics in the 25-nation 2025 Pew Global Attitudes Survey hold net-positive views of the United Nations, and several nations—such as South Africa, Nigeria, and Germany—have seen favorable views of the United Nations rise over the past year".

2. Humanitarian and development work - the field work
This is where defenders say the UN matters most: "For all the attention it garners, the real work of the United Nations is not done in speeches at the dais or at meetings of the UN Security Council". It is "aid programs that deliver badly needed medicines and healthcare... aiding refugees... helping to ensure children are fed".

Specific scale in 2024-2025:

As one commentator put it: "If the UN disappeared tomorrow, you'd notice immediately, and not in a good way".

3. Technical standard-setting
These functions are "boring, invisible, and genuinely indispensable": The International Civil Aviation Organization sets rules for international flights, the World Meteorological Organization coordinates weather data, and the World Health Organization runs disease surveillance and vaccination campaigns that "no single country could manage alone".

4. Preventing great-power war
One interpretation is that the UN is still relevant if you remember "the core purpose of its founding: to prevent another world war between the great powers". In that sense it is "best not thought of as a 'Parliament of Man'... but as a 'Concert of Great Powers'". That "the world has not witnessed another war on the scale of either the First or Second World Wars in the 80 years since the United Nations' founding is a testament to its success", even if, as the same author notes, that credit may also belong to nuclear deterrence.

Why Its Relevance Is Questioned

1. Veto paralysis in the Security Council
The most cited structural flaw. "The veto power of the five permanent members (P5) USA, UK, France, Russia, and China has crippled decision-making". For example:

In 2026, "this means Russia can block action on Ukraine, the US can block action on Israel-Palestine, and China can block action on Taiwan or Xinjiang". The Council "has been paralyzed on the most consequential conflicts of our era. This isn't a bug. It's the architecture".

Critics note: "The Security Council is deadlocked politically, and its composition, essentially frozen since 1945, has undercut its global legitimacy". And more broadly, "The original purpose of the Security Council was to prevent war between the great powers, not to prevent the great powers from waging war" - a distinction that explains why it fails to stop wars by great powers.

2. Failure to prevent major conflicts
Repeated failures "in preventing conflicts such as Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan along with veto paralysis" have "raised doubts about its effectiveness".

The UN "has been ineffective in major crises such as Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, Syria, and Sudan often reduced to passing symbolic resolutions", and peacekeeping missions "in Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia (1990s) failed to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing". More recently, analysts note peacekeeping is a "mixed bag at best" - when it works "it's because the conflict was already frozen, not because the UN stopped it".

3. Financial vulnerability
The UN is described as "financially-starved", with its ability to tackle "climate change, global health risks, humanitarian disasters, technological change, and longer-term development goals" shrinking rapidly.

This is because of dependence on a handful of donors, "especially the United States (contributing around 22% of its regular budget)". The situation has been "radically diminished by the United States' decision to delay critical budgetary support and put caps on its contributions to UN peacekeeping", which "has threatened to create a spiral downward as other states, especially China, delay their own financial support". The US also announced withdrawal from the "Paris Agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization", disrupting "progress on two of the greatest challenges for the 21st century".

Proposals during the Trump presidency for "an 83% cut in US foreign spending" highlighted the "fragility of its funding base", while "Around 40 nations default on annual dues".

Even overall, "The UN's regular budget is roughly $3 billion annually. That's less than what the New York City Police Department spends".

4. Bureaucracy, weak enforcement, and double standards
The UN "has been criticised for being slow, bureaucratic, and ineffective in enforcement. Even agreements like the Paris Climate Accord (2015) lack strong compliance mechanisms".

Critics point to "Selective Humanitarianism and Double Standards" - for instance authorising NATO in Libya (2011) but failing to rebuild the nation - and a "Crisis of Courage and Leadership" leaving it as a "toothless and clawless" organization.

5. Rise of alternatives
"The growth of regional and global groupings such as G20, BRICS, SCO, AU, and ASEAN shows that states increasingly rely on other mechanisms", seen as "more flexible and effective compared to the UN's slow processes". If the UN shrinks, experts warn of "a mini-lateral world of issue-specific, politically-driven alliances of convenience, a 'world minus one' configuration" where the US stands outside consensus or China sets the agenda.

The Reform Deadlock

Virtually everyone agrees reform is needed, but no one agrees how. "Everyone agrees the Security Council should expand. No one agrees on who gets in. India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan have been lobbying for permanent seats for decades. Africa demands representation. The current P5 resists dilution. The result: endless discussion, zero change".

Proposals include expanding membership to reflect contemporary power realities, restricting veto use in cases of genocide, stabilizing financing, and building synergy with regional platforms. Some argue for working around the Council via General Assembly "Uniting for Peace" resolutions and empowering regional organizations.

Yet as Chicago Council experts note: "While some ambitious reform proposals have been tabled, it is far from clear that the United Nations' leading member states have the will to transform" it.

Bottom Line

The most urgent task identified by experts ahead of the 80th anniversary is not grand redesign but "Salvaging the United Nations' financially-starved humanitarian capabilities" - preserving the part that still demonstrably saves lives, while the political part remains, as it was designed to be, a concert of powers that can only act when those powers agree.