UN at 80: Surviving Amid Political Divisions and Crises

UN at 80: Surviving Amid Political Divisions and Crises

At eighty, the United Nations is bogged down by structural limitations and political divisions that render it powerless to act decisively – nowhere more clearly than in the Gaza genocide.

There is only one treaty in the world that, despite its limitations, binds nations together: the United Nations Charter. Representatives of fifty nations wrote and ratified the UN Charter in 1945, with others joining in the years that followed.

The charter itself only sets the terms for the behaviour of nations. It does not and cannot create a new world. It depends on individual nations to either live by the charter or fail without it.

The charter remains incomplete. It needed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which was contested, as political and civil rights eventually had to be separated from social and economic rights. Deep rifts in political visions created fissures in the UN system that have kept it from effectively addressing global problems.

The UN is now eighty. It is a miracle that it has lasted this long. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 and lasted only eighteen years of relative peace (until World War II began in China in 1937).

The UN is only as strong as the community of nations that comprises it. If the community is weak, then the UN is weak. As an independent body, it cannot be expected to intervene like an angel and stop conflicts by itself.

The UN can only blow the whistle – an umpire for a game whose rules are routinely broken by powerful states. It offers a convenient punching bag for all sides: it is blamed if crises are not solved and if relief efforts fall short. Can the UN stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza?

UN officials have made strong statements during the genocide. Secretary-General António Guterres said that “Gaza is a killing field – and civilians are in an endless death loop” (8 April 2025) and that the famine in Gaza is “not a mystery – it is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself” (22 August 2025).

These are powerful words, but they have amounted to little, calling into question the efficacy of the UN itself.

The UN is not one body but two halves. The most public face of the UN is the Security Council (UNSC), which functions as its executive arm. The UNSC is made up of fifteen countries: five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and ten others elected for two-year terms.

The five permanent members (P5) hold veto power over the council’s decisions. If one of the P5 disagrees, they can block resolutions. Each time the UNSC has been presented with a resolution calling for a ceasefire, the United States has exercised its veto, quashing even the mildest measures (since 1972, the United States has vetoed over forty-five UNSC resolutions regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine).

The UNSC stands in for the UN General Assembly (UNGA), whose 193 members can pass resolutions to influence world opinion but are often ignored. Since the start of the genocide, the UNGA has passed five key resolutions calling for a ceasefire (first in October 2023, fifth in June 2025).

The UNGA has no real power in the UN system. The other half of the UN comprises its myriad agencies, each set up to deal with specific crises. Some predate the UN itself, such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO), created in 1919 and incorporated into the UN in 1946 as its first specialised agency.

Others followed, including UNICEF, which advocates for children’s rights, and UNESCO, which promotes cultural tolerance and respect.

Over the decades, agencies have been created to advocate for and provide relief to refugees, ensure nuclear energy is used for peace, improve global telecommunications, and expand development assistance. Their remit is impressive, though outcomes are modest.

Meagre funding from world states is one limitation (in 2022, the UN’s total expenditure was $67.5 billion, compared with over $2 trillion spent on the arms trade).

Chronic underfunding results largely from disagreements among global powers over the UN’s direction. Yet without the UN, much suffering in the world would neither be recorded nor addressed. The UN system has become the world’s humanitarian organisation largely because neoliberal austerity and war have destroyed most countries’ capacity to act, and NGOs are too small to fill the gap.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the global balance shifted, and the UN entered a cycle of internal reform initiatives: from Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace (1992) and An Agenda for Development (1994) and Kofi Annan’s Renewing the United Nations (1997) to Guterres’ Our Common Agenda (2021), Summit of the Future (2024), and UN80 Task Force (2025).

The UN80 Task Force is the deepest reform attempt, but its three areas of focus (internal efficiency, mandate review, and programme alignment) have been attempted previously.

The UN’s agenda focuses on organisational weaknesses and does not address the political questions that often stymie its work. A broader agenda would include:

Move the UN Secretariat to the Global South. Most UN agencies are headquartered in Europe or the US. Proposals have suggested relocating UNICEF, UN Population Fund, and UN Women to Nairobi. Moving the UNGA permanently outside the US could prevent visa denials for officials critical of US or Israeli policies.

Increase UN funding from the Global South. Currently, the US contributes 22%, China 20%, and seven US allies 28%. The Global South contributes about 26% (without China) and 46% with China. China should surpass the US as the largest funder.

Increase funding for humanitarianism within states. Countries should spend more on alleviating human distress than on wealthy bondholders. Many African countries spend more on debt than on education and healthcare, forcing reliance on UN agencies like UNICEF, UNESCO, and WHO.

Cut the global arms trade. Wars serve both domination and profit. International arms exports approach $150 billion annually, with the US and Western Europe accounting for 73% of sales between 2020 and 2024. In 2023, the top 100 manufacturers made $632 billion. Meanwhile, the UN peacekeeping budget is $5.6 billion, with 92% of peacekeepers from the Global South.

Strengthen regional peace and development structures. African, Arab, and Latin American regions should have greater influence to reduce UNSC veto power by the P5.

Amid the unrelenting genocide, another wave of solidarity activists – the Freedom Flotilla – attempts to reach Gaza. Among them is Ayoub Habraoui of Morocco’s Workers’ Democratic Way Party, representing the International Peoples’ Assembly.

He wrote: “What is happening in Gaza is not a conventional war – it is a slow-motion genocide unfolding before the world. I am joining because deliberate starvation is used to break the will of a defenseless people – denied medicine, food, and water, while children die in their mothers’ arms. Humanity is indivisible. Silence is complicity. Indifference is betrayal.”

The flotilla is more than boats – it is a global cry of conscience: no to sieges, no to starving the innocent, no to genocide.