Opinion | Time To Disband The UN: An Anachronistic Institution Past Its Expiration Date
Why the World War II-era United Nations has become an obstacle to peace
The United Nations has outlived its usefulness. What began as a noble experiment in 1945 to prevent another world war has devolved into an ineffective, expensive, and increasingly authoritarian body that serves the interests of dictatorships while betraying its founding principles. Recent discussions around restricting media freedom, combined with the organisation’s fundamental structural flaws and demonstrated failures, make clear that it is time to consign this World War II relic to history.
A Relic of Yesterday’s World Order
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The UN was conceived in the context of World War II, and its structure reflects the victors’ priorities from 80 years ago. The Security Council’s five permanent members—the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China—were chosen based on who emerged triumphant in 1945, not on current global realities.
This explains why economic powerhouses like Germany and Japan, despite being the world’s third and fourth-largest economies, lack permanent seats. India, the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people and the world’s fastest-growing major economy, was excluded due to Nehru’s misguided policy that prioritised ideological purity over practical influence. Rather than continuing to lobby for inclusion in this fundamentally flawed and exclusionary system, India and other nations must recognize that the Security Council’s design itself is irredeemably broken and the entire structure needs to be dismantled.
The world has changed dramatically since 1945, but the UN’s power structure remains locked in a bygone era when colonial empires still existed and nuclear weapons were in their infancy.
The Absurdity of Equal Voting Power
The General Assembly’s “one country, one vote" system represents perhaps the most democratically perverse arrangement in international relations. An Indian citizen’s vote carries 1/2,800,000th the weight of a Vatican citizen’s vote in UN deliberations. Tuvalu’s 12,000 residents have the same institutional voice as the world’s most populous nation with its 1.4 billion people. This means countries like Nauru (10,000 people), San Marino (34,000), and Palau (18,000) wield identical voting power to nations with hundreds of millions of citizens.
In any genuine democratic system, representation would be proportional to population. Instead, the UN has created a system where micro-states can form coalitions to outvote countries representing billions of people. This isn’t democracy—it’s a parody of representation that makes a mockery of the principle of democratic rights.
A Haven for Human Rights Violators
The UN Human Rights Council exemplifies how the organisation has become a shield for the world’s worst regimes rather than a sword for justice. China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, and other serial human rights violators have repeatedly secured seats on this supposedly principled body. Countries like Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, Cuba, Eritrea, and Somalia—all systematic violators of fundamental rights—have used their Council membership to protect each other from accountability while systematically targeting democratic nations.
From the Council’s founding in 2006 through 2019, it passed not a single resolution condemning China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, or Uzbekistan for their human rights violations. The Council has failed to meaningfully address systematic oppression in Islamic regimes, from Iran’s brutal crackdown on women protesters to Saudi Arabia’s public executions and suppression of dissent.
Meanwhile, democratic Israel faces more condemnations than all authoritarian regimes combined. The organisation’s bias extends beyond mere rhetoric—UNRWA, the UN agency supposedly providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, has been repeatedly exposed for employing Hamas operatives and allowing its facilities to be used for terrorist operations. The UN has been actively complicity in human rights abuses by providing international legitimacy to the perpetrators.
Operational Failures and Institutional Corruption
Beyond its structural biases, the UN has been plagued by operational scandals that would be unacceptable in any accountable organisation. UN peacekeepers, supposedly deployed to protect civilians, have committed widespread sexual abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Central African Republic, with hundreds of documented cases involving minors.
The organisation’s immunity provisions have created a culture of impunity where UN officials and peacekeepers escape prosecution for serious crimes. When scandals emerge, the typical response is internal investigation followed by quiet transfers rather than meaningful accountability. The Rwanda genocide stands as perhaps the most damning indictment: UN peacekeepers had advance warning of the planned massacres but were ordered not to intervene, leading to 800,000 deaths while blue helmets stood by as witnesses rather than protectors.
A Legacy of Failures
The UN’s incompetence has only accelerated in recent years. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization’s deference to China’s misinformation campaign cost countless lives by delaying global response and parroting Beijing’s false claims about human-to-human transmission. When the Taliban seized Afghanistan in 2021, the UN proved utterly powerless to protect women’s rights or influence the regime’s medieval policies, despite decades of involvement in the country.
The organisation’s response to Myanmar’s military coup has been equally feckless. Despite overwhelming evidence of genocide against the Rohingya and systematic oppression following the 2021 coup, the UN has managed little more than strongly worded statements while the military junta consolidates power and commits atrocities with impunity. These failures demonstrate that when faced with determined authoritarians, the UN’s elaborate procedures and diplomatic protocols amount to organizsed impotence.
While pandering to dictator and Islamic regimes, the organisation has also served as a handmaiden to Western imperialism. The 2011 intervention in Libya exemplifies this perfectly: the UN Security Council authorised a “no-fly zone" to protect civilians, but NATO forces used this mandate to orchestrate regime change, deposing Muammar Gaddafi to serve France’s colonial interests in accessing Libyan oil and gold reserves and preventing North Africa from moving away from the Franc.
The result was predictable chaos—Libya descended into a failed state with competing militias, open slave markets, and mass refugee flows across the Mediterranean. The UN’s “Responsibility to Protect" doctrine became a convenient cover for Western powers to pursue their imperial ambitions while devastating the very populations they claimed to protect.
Financial Waste and Bureaucratic Bloat
The UN’s 2025 budget stands at $3.72 billion for regular operations, with an additional $5.5 billion for peacekeeping operations. Yet the organisation faces a severe funding crisis, with only $1.8 billion received against $3.5 billion in regular budget assessments—a 50 per cent shortfall. Member states owe $2.4 billion in unpaid assessments, demonstrating the lack of confidence in the institution even among its supposed supporters.
A preliminary review identified more than 3,600 unique mandates for the Secretariat alone, creating a Byzantine bureaucracy that excels at process but fails at results. The organisation has become a self-perpetuating administrative behemoth that prioritizes its own survival over effective action.
Has it Really Prevented War?
Despite eight decades of UN operations, the world currently faces the highest number of violent conflicts since World War II, with 56 active conflicts involving 92 countries. Despite the vaunted “peacekeeping" of the UN, conflicts continue to proliferate and intensify.
The organisation has failed spectacularly in its primary mission of maintaining international peace and security. It stood by during genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Myanmar. It was powerless to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or stop the carnage in Syria. In 2017, almost half a million people were killed in homicides worldwide, far surpassing the 89,000 killed in active armed conflicts, yet the UN’s focus remains on diplomatic theater rather than addressing real violence.
The Path Forward
The UN’s supporters will argue for reform rather than abolition, but the institution’s problems are structural, not procedural. The Security Council’s veto system ensures that meaningful action on major issues remains impossible. The General Assembly’s voting structure cannot be reformed without the consent of the very micro-states that benefit from the current system’s absurdity.
Regional organisations like the European Union, African Union, and ASEAN have proven more effective at addressing their members’ specific challenges. The AU and Organization of American States have successfully used mediation and preventive diplomacy to resolve conflicts, demonstrating that smaller, more focused institutions can achieve what the UN cannot.
Instead of pouring billions more into this failing institution, the world’s democracies should create new, genuinely representative international bodies based on population and economic contribution. Let the authoritarians and micro-states keep the UN’s headquarters in New York as a museum to multilateral failure, while serious nations get on with the business of actual cooperation and conflict resolution.
Conclusion
The UN was born from humanity’s noblest aspirations after history’s most devastating war. Those aspirations deserve better than an institution that has become a playground for dictators, a shield for human rights abusers, and an obstacle to effective international action. After 80 years of disappointing performance and hundreds of billions in wasted resources, it is time to acknowledge that this particular experiment in global governance has failed.
The world needs international cooperation more than ever, but it doesn’t need the United Nations. Let us build something better—more democratic, more effective, and more worthy of the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. The first step is admitting that the UN, like the League of Nations before it, has become an impediment to the very peace and cooperation it was meant to foster.
It is time to consign this World War II anachronism to history and build institutions fit for the modern world.
Sankrant Sanu is the CEO of Garuda Prakashan and tweets at @sankrant. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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