Eighty years on, the United Nations faces a test of its soul

As the United Nations marks its 80th anniversary, the world stands at an unsettling crossroads. The institution that once symbolised humanity’s collective yearning for peace and cooperation now faces an existential question: can it still lead in an era of shattered consensus and resurgent nationalisms? Born from the ashes of global war, the UN was imagined as the world’s conscience — a moral and political safeguard against chaos. Yet today, it appears less a custodian of order than a mirror to disorder itself, caught between paralysis and irrelevance.

The 21st century has not been kind to multilateralism. From Gaza to Ukraine, Sudan to Myanmar, the UN’s inability to prevent or even effectively respond to humanitarian crises has exposed its deepest vulnerabilities. Its resolutions are flouted with impunity, its peacekeepers constrained by outdated mandates, and its Secretary-General often relegated to issuing moral statements in a world increasingly deaf to moral authority. Even as conflicts multiply, so too does cynicism: nations no longer look to New York for solutions but to ad hoc alliances, regional blocs, and great-power bargains.

The contrast between the UN’s founding ideals and its current impotence is stark. In 1945, the victors of World War II built an institution meant to transcend power politics. Today, the same institution is hostage to it. The Security Council — once conceived as the nerve centre of global security — now embodies paralysis. The veto, originally a stabilising mechanism, has become a weapon of convenience. Between Russia’s obstruction of Ukraine and the United States’ repeated vetoes shielding Israel from accountability, the Council has all but forfeited moral legitimacy.

This erosion of credibility is not confined to the Council. Across the UN system, the gap between rhetoric and reality has grown dangerously wide. The Sustainable Development Goals, hailed in 2015 as a blueprint for global progress, are now off-track on nearly every major indicator. Global hunger is a reality, climate finance commitments remain unfulfilled, and developing countries — already burdened by debt and disasters — face the brunt of crises they did little to create. The multilateral promise of “no one left behind” has quietly yielded to a hierarchy of suffering, where the powerful dictate whose tragedies matter.

The decline of the UN reflects a deeper crisis of moral authority. It is not merely that the system fails to function — it fails to inspire. The post-war moral consensus that underpinned the UN Charter — respect for sovereignty, collective security, and human rights — is fracturing. Power has dispersed, but justice has not followed. The rise of regional rivalries, digital authoritarianism, and populist unilateralism has weakened the global public good. The UN’s voice, once commanding, now often sounds like a whisper in a storm.
Yet amid this turmoil, there remains a flicker of renewal — a possibility that the UN might still reinvent itself as the conscience of a multipolar world. The key lies not in bureaucratic reform alone, but in moral and philosophical rejuvenation. The question the UN must confront is not simply how to change its structures, but how to reclaim its soul.

India’s perspective is instructive here. As one of the UN’s founding members and among its most consistent contributors to peacekeeping, humanitarian work, and development cooperation, India’s engagement has always been anchored in principle, not expediency. But India’s recent diplomatic posture also reflects a recognition that moral capital must accompany economic and political weight. It sees the UN not as an anachronism but as an unfinished project — one that must be made more democratic, equitable, and empathetic.

New Delhi’s foreign policy over the last decade has increasingly sought to bridge divides between the Global North and South. By foregrounding ideas like “One Earth, One Family, One Future” and hosting the Voice of Global South Summit, India is articulating a vision of global governance that is less about dominance and more about dialogue. The inclusion of the African Union in the G20, an achievement credited to India’s leadership, was not a mere procedural expansion but a symbolic act of moral correction. It reminded the world that legitimacy in global governance must flow from inclusion, not exclusion.

This moral framing is crucial because the UN’s crisis today is not technical but ethical. The institution’s moral compass has drifted. It often acts decisively when Western interests are at stake but hesitates when suffering occurs outside its strategic orbit. This selective empathy erodes trust among the majority of nations that see a double standard in the application of international law. For millions in the Global South, the UN has ceased to represent universality; it has become, instead, a stage for power politics performed in the language of principle.

India’s proposition, therefore, is not to abandon the UN but to restore it. Reform must begin with re-centring moral legitimacy as the foundation of global order. This means giving voice to those historically marginalised — small island nations facing existential climate threats, least developed countries burdened by debt, and conflict-affected regions that remain peripheral to global attention. It also means reimagining peacekeeping and humanitarian action through partnerships that respect local agency rather than impose external blueprints.

At the same time, the UN must adapt to the emerging frontiers of conflict and cooperation. The digital realm, artificial intelligence, and biosecurity now shape the contours of global power. Yet no coherent framework exists to govern these domains. The UN’s silence on issues such as AI ethics, cyber warfare, and digital surveillance underscores its obsolescence in areas that increasingly define human security. Here again, India’s experience as a democracy navigating technological disruption offers valuable lessons, demonstrating that innovation and ethics can coexist within a rules-based framework.

What the UN urgently needs is not another declaration but a renewal of purpose. The “Pact for the Future”, adopted at the 2024 Summit, gestured toward such renewal but fell short of outlining a vision commensurate with the gravity of the times. To remain relevant, the UN must learn to speak not in the language of 1945 but of 2025 — a world of interdependence without equality, connectivity without compassion.

The stakes could not be higher. If the UN fails to adapt, alternative coalitions will continue to fill the void — the G20, BRICS+, ASEAN, and others. While these forums have demonstrated agility, they lack the universality and moral gravitas that the UN once embodied. The risk is not that multilateralism will die, but that it will fragment — replaced by transactional networks of convenience rather than collective institutions of conscience.

The founders of the UN believed that peace was inseparable from justice. That moral clarity, forged in the aftermath of genocide and total war, gave the organisation its authority. Eight decades later, the danger is not another world war but a world adrift, where suffering becomes normalised and institutions lose both trust and teeth. In such a moment, reform cannot be postponed; it must be reimagined as a moral awakening.

India’s call, therefore, is not merely for a “seat at the table” but for the restoration of principle to global politics. Its vision draws from an older, civilisational idea: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — “the world is one family.” That phrase, often invoked in diplomatic forums, carries a profound philosophical truth. It suggests that the legitimacy of power must rest on empathy, not exclusion. In a time when global governance teeters between relevance and ruin, that ethos may yet be the compass that steers humanity back toward hope.

The UN’s 80th anniversary is not a moment for commemoration but for reckoning. The question is not whether the institution will survive, but whether it can still serve the purpose for which it was born — to safeguard humanity from itself. If the United Nations cannot reclaim its moral centrality, the world will not collapse overnight, but something deeper will die — the belief that we can govern our shared destiny through reason and justice rather than force and fear.

The UN’s founding generation understood that peace was not a gift but a discipline — one that demanded humility, cooperation, and moral imagination. Those virtues are rare today, yet never more necessary. Whether the UN at eighty can rediscover them, along with urgent structural reforms, will determine not just its fate, but ours.

Amal Chandra is an author, political analyst, and columnist. He tweets @ens_socialis. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.