Beyond the Headlines: If the United Nations Cannot Stop the Wars, What Is It For?
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Beyond the Headlines: If the United Nations Cannot Stop the Wars, What Is It For?
Another September in New York
On September 8, 2026, the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly will open in New York. Two weeks later, from September 22 through 26 and again on September 28, presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, diplomats, civil society organizations, and international institutions will gather for the General Debate and the high-level meetings surrounding it.
As always, the speeches will be filled with familiar words: peace, cooperation, international law, sustainable development, human rights, dialogue; but outside the General Assembly Hall, the world presents a troubling contrast.
Wars and violent conflicts have reached levels not seen in decades. Ukraine continues to suffer the consequences of war. Gaza remains devastated. Sudan has produced the world’s largest displacement crisis. Tensions and conflict across the wider Middle East have disrupted trade, energy, agriculture, and food systems far beyond the battlefield. By mid-2025, more than 117 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced.
It is therefore reasonable to ask an uncomfortable question as another UN session begins: What is the United Nations actually accomplishing?
The question should not be dismissed as cynicism.
For families living under bombardment, refugees waiting for protection, communities facing hunger, or people watching international law violated with apparent impunity, declarations from New York can seem painfully distant.
There are serious reasons to question whether an institution created in 1945 is capable of responding adequately to the world of 2026.
There is another question we should ask before concluding that the UN has become irrelevant:
What exactly was the United Nations designed to be—and what power have its own Member States actually allowed it to exercise?
The UN Is Not a World Government
One source of frustration with the United Nations is the expectation that it should behave like a global government.
It cannot.
The UN has no sovereign authority over its 193 Member States. It does not have its own army ready to intervene wherever international law is violated. The Secretary-General cannot order a ceasefire. The General Assembly cannot compel a government to obey one of its resolutions simply because a large majority of countries voted for it.
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for international peace and security. Its decisions can be binding on Member States, but substantive decisions require nine votes and cannot be adopted if one of the five permanent members—the United States, China, Russia, France, or the United Kingdom—uses its veto.
The General Assembly is much more representative: every Member State has a vote, but on most international questions its role is to discuss and make recommendations rather than to issue enforceable commands. The Secretary-General has diplomatic tools, mediation, public advocacy, “good offices,” and the authority under Article 99 of the Charter to bring threats to peace before the Security Council—but not the power to force sovereign governments to accept peace.
This distinction matters.
Sometimes we accuse the UN of failing to use powers it never possessed.
That does not mean the criticism is misplaced.
It means the deeper problem is political.
The Veto: The Contradiction at the Heart of the System
The Security Council contains a contradiction that has been present since the beginning.
The institution responsible for defending collective security gives five countries the power to block collective action.
The logic in 1945 was pragmatic. The architects of the postwar order believed that no global security system could survive without the participation of the world’s most powerful states. Giving them permanent membership and veto power was the price of keeping them inside the system.
Eight decades later, that bargain increasingly shows its age.
When a permanent member is itself involved in a conflict—or when the strategic interests of one of the five are deeply implicated—the Council can become paralyzed. The veto has been used by all five permanent members at different moments in UN history. Criticism has become so persistent that since 2022 the General Assembly has automatically met to debate any Security Council veto, an attempt at least to increase political accountability where legal restraint is absent.
The structure also reflects the distribution of power at the end of the Second World War rather than today’s world. Africa has no permanent Security Council seat. Latin America has none. India, now one of the world’s most populous and influential countries, has none. Numerous governments continue to demand reform, although changing the Charter itself ultimately requires ratification by two thirds of UN members including all five permanent members—meaning those possessing the privilege must effectively agree to change it.
That is not a minor institutional defect.
It is one of the central reasons the UN can appear strongest when the great powers agree and weakest precisely when they disagree most dangerously.
When Rules Depend on Political Will
There is another uncomfortable reality.
International institutions ultimately depend on governments being willing to honor the rules they have accepted.
Security Council decisions can be legally binding, but implementation is uneven. International courts can issue judgments, humanitarian agencies can document suffering, investigators can establish facts, and General Assembly majorities can express overwhelming international opinion. None of these mechanisms automatically produces obedience. Even UN debates in 2026 have acknowledged the persistent gap between Security Council decisions and their implementation.
This exposes one of the great weaknesses of the international order:
law is strongest when states accept that law should restrain power—including their own power.
When governments instead conclude that military, economic, or geopolitical strength gives them permission to ignore common rules, no international organization can easily compensate.
Pope Leo XIV described this danger sharply in January. He warned that the weakness of multilateralism was becoming a serious international concern and that diplomacy based on dialogue and consensus was increasingly being replaced by diplomacy based on force and alliances of convenience. At the same time, he called for a United Nations that better reflects today’s world and becomes more focused and effective.
That is an important balance.
Defending multilateralism does not require pretending that its institutions are working well enough.
A “Board of Peace”: Solution, Warning, or Rival?
This tension became especially visible at the beginning of 2026.
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump launched a Board of Peace, initially connected to the Gaza ceasefire and reconstruction process. A UN Security Council resolution had recognized a temporary role for such a board in Gaza through 2027. Trump, however, publicly envisioned something broader: an institution that might address conflicts elsewhere in the world. His administration argued that a more flexible and pragmatic body could succeed where established international institutions had too often failed.
That idea attracted some governments and provoked deep unease in others.
The Board’s charter offered participating states three-year terms, with permanent membership available to those contributing $1 billion. Trump would chair it and exercise extensive executive authority. More than two dozen states were listed as founding members by July, but several major Western allies, as well as Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, China, and Russia, had not joined. The Vatican also stayed outside the initiative, indicating that crisis management should remain within the United Nations framework.
Trump denied that the Board was intended to replace the United Nations and said it could work in conjunction with it. Nevertheless, diplomats and governments expressed concern that an expanded global mandate could undermine the UN and create a competing center of international decision-making. Crucially, whatever ambitions the Board may have beyond Gaza, its UN-recognized authority remains limited to Gaza and temporary in duration. Its wider international legal authority remains unclear.
There is a legitimate debate here.
Institutions can become bureaucratic. Diplomacy can become ritualistic. A smaller group of governments may sometimes negotiate more quickly than 193 states. The frustration that generates new mechanisms should not simply be mocked.
Yet, efficiency is not the only value in international affairs.
A structure dominated by a small group of powerful governments may move faster precisely because fewer voices are heard.
And here a Vincentian instinct should make us cautious.
Who is missing from the table?
Who speaks for the people who do not possess military power, permanent seats, strategic resources, or billions of dollars?
The legitimacy of international action cannot depend only on whether powerful actors can reach an agreement quickly.
Peace imposed by the strong is not necessarily justice for the weak.
The Other Test: The Sustainable Development Goals
The UN’s credibility cannot be judged only by wars.
In 2015, all UN Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals: ending extreme poverty and hunger, expanding healthcare and education, reducing inequality, achieving gender equality, ensuring clean water, promoting decent work, building sustainable communities, protecting the planet, strengthening peace and justice, and creating global partnerships.
These goals were never legally binding in the same sense as a treaty or Security Council decision. Governments assumed political commitments, and implementation remained primarily their responsibility.
Eleven years later, the picture is sobering.
The UN’s 2026 Sustainable Development Goals report assessed 139 targets for which sufficient trend data exist. Only 36 percent are on track or making moderate progress. Another 49 percent are showing only marginal progress, while 15 percent have actually regressed below their 2015 baseline.
There are genuine achievements.
More than half the world’s population now receives at least one form of social protection. Disaster-related mortality has declined substantially over the past decade. Electricity reaches around 92 percent of the global population. Internet use rose from about 40 percent of humanity in 2015 to 74 percent in 2025. Maternal and child mortality have continued their long-term decline, and hundreds of millions more people have gained access to water and sanitation.
Those successes should not be dismissed, but they coexist with profound failure.
Roughly one person in ten still lives in extreme poverty. The global hunger rate remains above its 2015 level. More than 150 million children are stunted by chronic malnutrition. Progress against inequality remains deeply uneven. Climate change is intensifying. Development assistance fell sharply again in 2025, while low- and middle-income countries carried record external debt and historically high debt-service costs. At the same time, global military expenditure reached approximately $2.9 trillion in 2025, while the annual financing gap for sustainable development in developing countries stands at around $4 trillion.
Those numbers expose an uncomfortable political truth.
The world does not lack resources.
It makes choices about where resources go.
Level of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals by the end of 2025. Image: Own work.
Is That the UN’s Failure—or Ours?
It is tempting to look at these results and say: the United Nations has failed.
Partly, yes.
International institutions need reform. Bureaucracies must be accountable. Duplication wastes resources. Decision-making can be painfully slow. The UN itself recognizes this and is pursuing its UN80 reform initiative, involving restructuring, consolidation, relocation of functions, and efforts to reduce administrative costs. At the same time, the organization is facing a severe financial squeeze: its overall resource base is projected to contract by about $16 billion between 2024 and 2026, nearly one quarter.
Reform is necessary, but we should not confuse reform with dismantling.
A development goal is not implemented by the UN Secretariat. A government must build the school, protect social spending, provide clean water, regulate pollution, ensure healthcare, combat corruption, protect minorities, collect taxes fairly, and choose peace over weapons.
The UN can set standards, measure progress, coordinate, finance, advise, convene, negotiate, expose failures, and mobilize international cooperation.
It cannot substitute for the political will of nations.
That distinction does not absolve the organization, but it places responsibility where much of it belongs.
The UN is often accused of being powerless by the same governments that have refused to give it greater power—or that ignore its authority when its decisions become inconvenient.
The United Nations We Rarely See in the Headlines
There is another reason to resist the easy conclusion that the UN is useless.
Much of its most important work happens far from the Security Council chamber.
UN peacekeepers from 118 countries are currently serving in 11 peacekeeping missions, protecting civilians and supporting fragile political processes.
UN agencies vaccinate children, feed people facing famine, support refugees, monitor human rights, assist farmers, coordinate disaster relief, combat disease, protect cultural heritage, gather statistics, and establish standards that shape national laws.
These institutions are imperfect.
They have made mistakes.
They require scrutiny.
Imagine Sudan without humanitarian coordination. Imagine global refugee protection without UNHCR. Imagine emergency food assistance without the World Food Programme. Imagine global vaccination campaigns without UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
Their absence would not primarily inconvenience diplomats.
It would hurt people who are already vulnerable.
Pope Leo XIV highlighted precisely this reality during his June 2026 visit to the World Food Programme. He thanked its workers for serving people in emergencies and conflicts and called for renewed multilateral cooperation against hunger, insisting that the resources and productive capacity exist to feed humanity even while enormous resources continue to be consumed by conflict.
The Vincentian Family Is Already Inside This Story
For the Vincentian Family, the United Nations is not merely an institution we watch from outside.
We are already present there.
Several Vincentian organizations maintain NGO representation at the UN and collaborate through the Vincentian Family Coalition at the United Nations. The coalition has included AIC, the Congregation of the Mission, the Daughters of Charity, the Sisters of Charity Federation, and the International Confederation of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. It was created to strengthen joint advocacy and bring the experience of people living in poverty into international discussions.
That presence matters.
Vincentians working at the UN do not command armies or negotiate great-power treaties.
They do something more characteristic of our vocation.
They ask who is missing.
They bring issues such as homelessness, poverty, migration, women’s vulnerability, access to water, social protection, and sustainable development into spaces where global policy is discussed. The Congregation of the Mission’s UN representation explicitly connects international advocacy with systemic change and with the people pushed to the social and economic margins.
This is advocacy in the tradition of Vincent de Paul.
Vincent served people directly, but he also spoke to those who held power.
He understood that charity cannot remain forever downstream, pulling people from the river while refusing to ask who or what is pushing them in.
Today’s Vincentian presence at the United Nations follows the same logic:
bring the experience of the poor to the places where decisions are made.
The Poor Cannot Afford the Collapse of Multilateralism
There are strong reasons to be dissatisfied with the United Nations.
The Security Council requires reform.
The veto can produce morally intolerable paralysis.
International law is too often applied selectively.
The bureaucracy must become more agile.
Development promises must be matched with financing.
The voices of Africa, Latin America, smaller states, civil society, Indigenous peoples, and people experiencing poverty need greater weight.
There is a danger in moving from justified criticism to the conclusion that international cooperation itself has failed.
The alternative to imperfect multilateralism is not automatically better multilateralism.
It may simply be a world in which the strongest states form temporary alliances, negotiate among themselves, and impose outcomes on everyone else.
For wealthy and powerful nations, that may sometimes seem manageable.
For small countries and vulnerable populations, it is far more dangerous.
Rules matter most to those who cannot defend themselves through power.
International law matters most to the country that cannot deter invasion.
Refugee conventions matter most to the person at the border.
Human-rights monitoring matters most to the prisoner nobody can visit.
The Sustainable Development Goals matter most to the community still waiting for clean water, a school, a clinic, decent housing, or electricity.
The weak have more need of rules than the strong.
That is why Vincentians should be neither naive defenders of the United Nations nor casual advocates of its abandonment.
We should be demanding friends of multilateralism.
Beyond the Headlines
When the television cameras arrive in New York this September, much attention will focus on speeches.
Who attacked whom.
Who walked out.
Who refused to meet.
Who received applause.
Who dominated the headlines.
Perhaps the more important questions lie elsewhere.
Will governments reform a Security Council that no longer reflects the world it is supposed to serve?
Will powerful states accept international law when the law limits their own interests?
Will governments fund humanitarian assistance while needs are rising?
Will military expenditure continue reaching records while sustainable development faces a multitrillion-dollar financing gap?
Will the promise to “leave no one behind” remain a slogan—or become a political priority?
And will civil society be allowed not merely to observe these discussions but to carry into them the voices of those who rarely enter diplomatic rooms?
The United Nations was never designed to save humanity from humanity without humanity’s cooperation.
It cannot force nations to become just.
It cannot create political courage where governments refuse to exercise it.
It can still provide something increasingly rare: a common table where almost every nation on earth must at least encounter the existence, interests, rights, and voices of the others.
That table is inadequate.
It is unequal.
It urgently needs repair.
Before we throw it away, we should ask who would be left standing outside if it disappeared.
For Vincentians, perhaps that is where discernment begins.
Not with the reputation of an institution.
Not with the prestige of diplomats.
Not even with the interests of the most powerful nations, but with the question Saint Vincent continually teaches us to ask: What will this mean for those who are poor?
If reform makes international institutions more capable of protecting them, we should demand reform.
If governments use the UN as an excuse for their own inaction, we should say so.
If new diplomatic mechanisms can genuinely create peace while respecting international law and the voices of those affected, they deserve serious consideration.
If the world moves toward a system where power replaces law, wealth purchases influence, and the strongest decide what peace should look like for everyone else, then those who will pay the greatest price will not be sitting in the General Assembly Hall.
They will be in refugee camps.
In bombed neighborhoods.
In drought-stricken villages.
In overcrowded shelters.
In communities without clinics or schools.
At the end of the month with an empty refrigerator.
Those are the people whose interests should ultimately determine how we judge the United Nations—and how urgently we insist that it become better.
Javier F. Chento.
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Javier, this is an excellent article. I found it interesting, informative, and thought-provoking. I sent copies to some of my family members. Thank you for the research you put into writing it.