Is the United Nations still relevant?

The question of UN relevance is genuinely contested, and reasonable people disagree based on what criteria they prioritize. Let me pull in some current context to ground this.## Is the UN Still Relevant? It's Complicated.

The honest answer is yes, but with serious caveats — the UN remains relevant in many areas while facing a genuine crisis of legitimacy and effectiveness in others.

The case that it's struggling

Security Council paralysis: The Council's core design hasn't changed since 1945. Designed for 1945, the UN's most powerful body can't handle the crises of 2026. As one foreign affairs correspondent put it bluntly, when it comes to the Security Council, it's effectively a frozen palace. I mean, nothing can happen. The big powers are vetoing each other, and decisions are not being made.

This isn't abstract — it plays out in real conflicts. The United Nations has faced sharp criticism for its failure to preserve international peace and security — its key mission — with critics pointing to the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Congo.

A financial crisis compounding the problem: The UN marked its 80th anniversary amid severe funding troubles. The Secretary-General's latest report revealed that as of September 30, 57 member states still owed a total of USD 1.9 billion in mandatory contributions—including USD 1.5 billion from the United States. The UN has already borrowed the full amount of its reserve and expects to draw again on its last liquidity buffers. This has forced painful cuts — the UN leadership approved a reform initiative called "UN80" which included a 15 percent reduction in its 2026 budget, relocating personnel, and thousands of job cuts.

Structural legitimacy problems: Many argue the Council reinforces outdated power dynamics. None of its permanent members represents low- or middle-income countries, and the Security Council also does not reflect all world regions — noticeably absent are any permanent members from Africa, Central and South America, or the Middle East. Even the outgoing Secretary-General has warned about this: António Guterres warned that the "fragile" legitimacy of the Security Council could endanger global peace if it remains gridlocked and fails to fulfil its primary purpose.

The case that it's still essential

Despite all this, the UN isn't just the Security Council. The U.N. is like an organization of organizations — it has organizations within it that deal with humanitarian aid, migration, things like that, and a lot of them do good work. Agencies handling refugees, children's welfare, public health, telecommunications standards, and disaster response continue functioning even as the political bodies stall.

There's also an argument that the Council, flawed as it is, remains the only venue where great powers must talk to each other. Without sustained deconfliction among the P5, the U.N. cannot function as a system of collective security — yet the council remains a place where compromise is possible, including on the big issues.

Where this leaves us

Governments themselves increasingly frame relevance as conditional on reform. As UN News summarized from this year's General Assembly debates: "Can the UN still remain relevant if it still looks and acts like the organization it was when it was formed in 1945?" Many governments believe the United Nations can only remain credible and effective if its institutions better reflect the realities of the 21st century.

My honest take: The UN is relevant in the sense that no alternative institution currently does what it does — coordinating humanitarian aid, setting international norms, providing a forum for every country (not just powerful ones) to be heard, and running on-the-ground agencies that millions depend on. But its political relevance — specifically the Security Council's ability to prevent or stop major conflicts — is genuinely in crisis, and that crisis is compounded by a funding shortfall that's forcing real cuts to programs. Whether it stays relevant going forward may hinge on whether reform efforts (which have stalled for decades) finally gain traction, or whether powers increasingly route around it, as suggested by moves like the U.S.-led "Board of Peace" mentioned as a fairly clear effort to offer a U.S.-dominated alternative to a languishing U.N. Security Council.

So: not irrelevant, but increasingly tested — and many of the people running it are saying so themselves.