At 80, the UN should be celebrating endurance. Instead, it faces an audit of relevance. The wars it cannot stop, the money it cannot raise, and the legitimacy it cannot turn into results all raise one question: Does it still matter?
The UN’s founding promise was to maintain peace and security. Eight decades on, that promise is unfulfilled. From Gaza to Ukraine, Sudan to Haiti, today’s crises expose both the UN’s weakness and its necessity. At the General Assembly, in an otherwise rambling speech, US President Donald Trump starkly captured this dilemma: “The UN has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close… It’s empty words and empty words don’t solve war.”
In Gaza, Israel, the United States and regional actors have sidelined the UN with their own diplomacy. None has delivered aid at scale. UNRWA, battered by cuts and political attacks, is still the only lifeline for millions of Palestinians. The UN is not keeping peace, only offering fragments of relief.
In Ukraine, the Security Council is paralysed. General Assembly votes show solidarity is waning. Yet, if a ceasefire comes, the UN may be asked to do work it cannot refuse but is unprepared to deliver.
Sudan’s war has pushed millions toward famine, with aid blocked deliberately. In Haiti, a Kenya-led mission falters while Washington presses for more force and UN logistics. Together these crises tell one story: The UN’s defining task is peace. Yet in conflict after conflict, it has become a bystander.
Behind battlefield failures lies another weakness: Money.
In 2025, Washington has reset the tone. Its funding follows its own priorities. The irony is sharp: The nation that once led in establishing the UN now bends it to selective purposes. Security is prioritised while food, rights, and culture are neglected. This year’s dues remain unpaid, and past arrears linger. Exits from climate and health platforms, and disdain for the UN’s role on migration, have reduced multilateralism to a menu. Washington supports what suits it and ignores the rest.
Beijing presents itself as a defender of multilateralism. It casts global development, global security, global civilisation and global governance as UN-compatible. China contributes 20 per cent of mandatory assessments, the UN’s second-largest share. But since 70 per cent of the funding is voluntary, China’s thin giving makes its support more rhetorical than real. If America offers multilateralism à la carte, China offers visions with gaps.
Others are also retreating. Europe speaks the language of rules but pays less to enforce them. Its pledges on peacekeeping, development assistance and humanitarian relief are thinning under domestic pressure. The Gulf, by contrast, spends freely but selectively, funding what amplifies its leverage rather than what strengthens the UN. Both claim multilateralism, but neither invests in it as a system. The gap between their words and their wallets leaves the UN poorer and weaker.
Inside the system, survival means austerity. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s UN80 plan is triage. Mandates trimmed, procedures digitised, budget cut by 15 per cent, and staff reductions by nearly a fifth just to keep the lights on. What passes for reform is retreat: Erosion managed, not the future shaped. The danger is not sudden collapse, but gradual withering.
As contributions pull back, the most vulnerable press their demands harder.
Africa has come to see Security Council reform as distant. Its priority is ending the cycle of poorly resourced peacekeeping. Troops are sent without proper equipment or reimbursement. Peacekeeping has become the transfer of burdens without the transfer of resources. In Congo or South Sudan, ceasefires could hold if properly supported. Without that, ad-hoc coalitions take over.
Small island states demand resilience finance. They want concessional lending tied to climate risk, real loss and damage funds, and reliable relief before the next storm. So far, there have been promises, not payouts.
For a voice that straddles vulnerability and ambition, attention turns to India. It needs the UN for predictable rules and collective stability, while sharing the Global South’s frustration with an underfunded system dominated by the P5. This duality gives India a vantage point. It can amplify calls for resilience finance while shaping rules for peacekeeping, digital governance, climate action and pooled humanitarian response.
If India invests, it could bridge the gap between a faltering UN and the South’s demands. If it hesitates, wary of costs and doubtful of change, it cedes space where it could lead. The time to choose is now.
Leadership matters as much as money. The selection of the next-secretary general will show whether the UN chooses renewal or ritual. A year-long search threatens to entrench drift when urgency is needed. Calls for a first woman leader grow louder, but the P5 still hold the keys.
At 80, the UN has no right to ceremony without service. Its audit is not about the speeches by 150 leaders, but about whether the UN can keep relief corridors open in war, mobilise resources before disaster, and offer legitimacy where power alone cannot. The choice is clear: Deliver through structural reform, enhanced resources, and renewed leadership or diminish into irrelevance.
Without renewal, authority will drift to regional blocs and coalitions of the willing. The UN will hollow into a shell, and the wider promise of multilateralism will recede even as global challenges multiply. After Trump’s address, irrelevance feels less like a risk and more like the UN’s trajectory.
The writer is former permanent representative of India to the United Nations, and dean, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad
