As the United Nations (UN) completed its 80 years this week, it appeared in urgent need of thoroughgoing reform to remain relevant to growing challenges and changing times. Secretary-General António Guterres’ impassioned reminder that the inception of the world organisation was a result of a deliberate choice in favour of cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness and peace over conflict does not appear to have cut much ice among many member countries.

Crisis of confidence

The United States (US) President, Donald Trump, took the podium of the General Assembly in September to launch a frontal attack against the UN for failing to deliver on multiple fronts, including ending major long-standing conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere. His relentless, if not reckless, broadsides since the beginning of his second term early this year are threatening to upend the 20th-century US-inspired, rules-based international order managed through the UN and a web of multilateral institutions designed to facilitate interstate cooperation in security and economic and social areas under conditions of complex interdependence.

The US has opted out of the World Health Organisation, UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council and the 2015 accord on climate action. Further, his administration has slashed its legally binding financial contributions, seriously undercutting the UN’s critical humanitarian assistance work. It was announced that the US would pay only half of its expected 2025 peacekeeping contributions, reducing its payment to US $680 million from US $1 billion.

The US is not alone in voicing unhappiness with the world organisation. The Israeli Prime Minister has lost no opportunity to unabashedly berate the UN and its high-ranking officials, including the Secretary-General, particularly after its military operations in Gaza began in retaliation to the Hamas terror attack in October 2023. Peacekeeping mission personnel as well as UN relief workers were shamelessly targeted in military and diplomatic campaigns. The Russian Federation complains that the UN pays no consideration to the circumstances that compelled its continuing illegal occupation of one-fifth of Ukraine, an original member of the UN.

On the other hand, India’s External Affairs Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, has been quite vocal that the UN reflects only the outdated geopolitical realities of 1945, without adequately accommodating the 21st-century realities in the composition of the Security Council. He is not, of course, off the mark. The council, with the important task of keeping global peace secure, is often polarised due to the lack of agreement between the two veto-bearing permanent members – the Russian Federation and the United States – which in turn has resulted in a spike in the Council’s inability to take urgent action, from 5% to 33% of occasions during 2011-22. The General Assembly, where veto power does not apply, has attempted to fill the vacuum by reaffirming the basic principles of the UN Charter, but with no practical effect on ground realities.

Erosion of peacekeeping and development work

Peacekeeping – traditionally the hallmark of UN work in international security – has witnessed a disturbingly downward trend. Two major operations in Africa have faced a humiliating fate in recent years. The mission in civil war-cum-terror-stricken Mali was terminated in 2023, while the operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is being withdrawn in phases at the request of host governments unhappy with the perceived lack of impartiality of UN operations. At the same time, the total strength of peacekeepers has declined by 40%, from a peak of 107,000 to 61,000 during 2016-25, principally owing to ill-timed drawdowns under the garb of operational efficiency.

This picture will assume worrisome proportions when the proposed 35% cut to personnel takes place in 2026 owing to unpaid financial contributions and prolonged delays in troop supplies.

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It is not that the work and operational style of the UN are without blemish. The UN is rightly accused of unregulated mandate overlap and monumental waste of resources, apart from occasional accusations of corruption and red tape. As one of the latest reports brings out, in 2024 alone the UN held 27,000 meetings that produced some 11,000 reports – and three out of five were on overlapping topics.

Pattern of predictable reforms under compulsion

The UN top brass has often sought to mollify critics and cynics through ad hoc measures encompassing exercises in budget cuts and administrative rejigs. In the latest instance, the UN is forced to bring in significant budget cuts, including a 15.1% reduction for the 2026 budget to the tune of USD 3.2 billion, down from the 2025 appropriation and a 25% cut to peacekeeping operations. These cuts followed the announcement by the Trump administration that it would pay only about half of its expected 2025 peacekeeping contribution, reducing its payment to USD 680 million from USD 1 billion.

Alongside, these cuts are expected to result in around 2,681 job reductions (18.8%) in the regular budget. Regrettably, this will derail many programmes, most notably the largest multilateral humanitarian window, the World Food Programme (WFP), which expects a 40% funding drop (from US $10 billion in 2024 to approximately 6.4 billion in 2025). Naturally, numerous small developing countries are worried about the future of the programmes that cater to their development aspirations, as espoused in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. As a matter of fact, nearly three-fourths of UN resources are directed to providing short-term and long-term assistance to the least developed and conflict-affected countries in Africa and elsewhere.

The UN’s top bureaucracy has responded to critics with a predictable pattern of reforms focused principally on managerial and symbolic adaptations and improvisations – whether by merging departments and committees, rationalising agenda items, or limiting the time for speeches and the length of reports. Revamping of principal bodies has long remained a far cry.

After the 1965 expansion of the non-permanent seats from six to ten in the Security Council, the only notable intergovernmental restructuring was the establishment of the Human Rights Council in 2006, with refreshing organising principles like no automatic seating of the permanent members, the requirement of human rights conformity pledges from those seeking election, two-term limits for consecutive electoral representation and provision for suspension or expulsion of elected countries on account of egregious violations of human rights. The expectation that this would inspire major structural changes on similar lines across the organisation was unfortunately belied, just as the standing of the Human Rights Council itself has suffered.

Need for fresh ideas and initiatives

If the momentum against the rules-based order picks up pace in Washington, it does not bode well for the future of the UN. What sort of future holds for the UN in the present times of unpredictable and fluid conditions is a moot question. Undeniably, the originally intended exclusive character of the UN has remarkably transformed into an inclusive and universal membership since the early 1960s, due to the pace of decolonisation. This has meant a remarkably peaceful transformation of the post-war inter-state system over the past 80 years.

Also read: India Is Between a Rising South and a Fractured West

Ironically, the former enemy countries like Germany, Japan and Italy have not only joined the UN but are now aspiring to assume greater responsibility in the Council. Communist China, once a bitter critic of the UN before it assumed its rightful place as a UN member, is now a staunch supporter of UN-led multilateralism. India, for its part, has built a strong reputation for its “clear and consistent support” of the UN. Nonetheless, the challenge presently is to creatively – and collaboratively – craft a fresh or altered organisational design that shows resilience to accommodate the transition from the Westphalian to the post-Westphalian global order.

A feared return to the 19th-century hegemonic era, characterised by a non-transparent and non-accountable US-Russia or US-China duopoly to recolonise prized territories, could make the UN a pale shadow of itself. Who will remain in such a rump UN, or provide leadership to imaginatively design an alternative umbrella body, is a major question to ponder. A related question is whether and how China, Europe and India are well placed to undertake such a politically and intellectually daunting exercise.

None among the US, Russia, China or even India presently enjoys the necessary political capital to lead a rigorous enterprise for devising a better global institutional design built on the bulwark of progressive principles of international accountability and legitimacy. But that does not mean that India should continue to shy away from thinking and working in a structured fashion on a suitable architectural design involving domestic and foreign dialogue partners, especially from within the Global South.

The contrarian view holds that it is not easy to dissolve open-membership, general-purpose and long-lasting institutions like the UN, irrespective of their deficiencies and failings. Studies show that nearly 70% of international organisations have survived existential threats. As for the UN, it has past experience in patiently weathering mood swings in the capitals of major powers, the US in particular.

The author was Professor at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the author of India in the United Nations: Interplay of Interests and Principles (SAGE, 2020).

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