By Robert Kayinamura
This year, the United Nations turned 80. Whether it survives to 100 as a relevant institution depends on the willingness of both its Member States and the UN system to confront hard truths and embrace meaningful reform.
Born from the ashes of World War II, the UN was designed to uphold peace, protect human rights, and unite nations. But today, it risks becoming a relic outpaced by climate shocks, digital divides, demographic shifts, and rising geopolitical fragmentation.
As a Rwandan, I reflect on the UN with mixed emotions. In 1994, during the Genocide against the Tutsi, the international community acting through the UN failed Rwanda. But in the aftermath, the UN helped us rebuild institutions and restore dignity. Today, Rwanda is one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping. Multilateralism, when it functions, can be transformative.
Yet the UN’s credibility is fraying. Its responses to crises are alarmingly inconsistent—swift in some regions, indifferent in others. Few cases illustrate this better than the decades-long persecution of Rwandophone communities in eastern DRC. The Banyamulenge, Congolese citizens of Rwandan descent, have endured statelessness, displacement, targeted violence, and systemic discrimination. Their plight is well documented by The New Humanitarian, Genocide Watch, and others yet remains absent from Security Council debates. This is not mere oversight; it is structural failure. Powerful Council members preserve the status quo, while vulnerable communities are erased from the agenda.
To ask whether the UN is failing is to ask: Who, exactly, is the UN? It is more than the Secretariat in New York. It is a complex ecosystem: six principal organs, 193 Member States, and dozens of agencies. The General Assembly offers legitimacy but lacks teeth. The Security Council is often paralyzed hostage to national interests and geopolitical rivalries. The Economic and Social Council is underutilized. The International Court of Justice suffers from selective compliance. The Trusteeship Council is obsolete.
Only the Secretariat remains consistently active though not always consistently effective constrained by rigid bureaucracy and limited space for innovation.
And yet, those who staff the UN are not faceless technocrats. They are our fellow citizens, drawn from every country. They work tirelessly inside a system slowed by outdated rules, redundant processes, and institutional inertia. The internal dynamics between the Secretariat, the Chief Procurement Committee, and multiple layers of review too often delay rather than deliver.
But the problem is not the UN bureaucracy alone. It is also how Member States behave. Many have turned the UN into an extension of their foreign policy toolkits, using multilateral platforms selectively to push narrow agendas. This has deepened divisions. Global South, increasingly aware of this imbalance, has grown disillusioned. Yet instead of unity, we remain trapped in artificial binaries North and South, developed and developing that betray the UN’s founding vision of shared responsibility.
So is the UN failing because of inefficient organs or negligent Member States? The answer is both and neither. The root problem is a breakdown in accountability.
Accountability must become the cornerstone of a future-ready UN.
The Secretariat must be held to clear standards of ethics, transparency, and performance. Senior officials should be evaluated based on real-world impact, not just internal metrics or political favor. Leaders who underperform must be replaced, and the culture of internal protectionism must end.
But the burden cannot fall on the UN system alone. Member States must also uphold their responsibilities politically, financially, and morally. That includes paying assessed contributions in full and on time, refraining from micromanagement, and following through on the very reforms they have demanded. It also means empowering the UN to innovate and take calculated risks, rather than punishing it for imperfection.
All six principal organs of the UN should be subject to regular, independent scrutiny. No part of the institution should hide behind ritual or bureaucracy. Shielded opacity and impunity whether at the Secretariat or within the Security Council undermine the organization’s legitimacy.
The veto power held by the Security Council’s five permanent members exemplifies this distortion. Originally designed to ensure global stability, it is now often used to protect allies or block uncomfortable truths. Who holds these five to account? Who ensures they act in the interest of collective security? Today, no clear mechanism exists. That silence fuels frustration especially in regions where Security Council inaction has had deadly consequences.
In 2024, the Pact for the Future offered a hopeful blueprint for a revitalized multilateralism digital equity, climate justice, peacebuilding, youth inclusion, and reform of the global financial system. But declarations are not reform. Without enforceable mechanisms, adequate resourcing, and political will, the pact will join the long list of forgotten promises.
I have seen the potential for reform when backed by determination. I was part of the 2018 process that restructured the UN’s management, development, and peace and security architecture. The repositioning of UN Country Teams and the creation of the Resident Coordinator system demonstrated what’s possible when reform is aligned with national priorities and backed by funding. But even these gains are now under threat eroded by underfunding and wavering political commitment.
What’s needed is a new compact of mutual accountability between the Secretariat, agencies, and Member States. One that demands delivery, rewards outcomes, and penalizes failure. A UN that is not judged by the volume of its reports but by the tangible difference it makes in people’s lives.
This is not a call to abandon multilateralism, it is a call to rescue and reimagine it.
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That includes reforming the Security Council not just expanding it to include permanent African representation but also making its working methods more transparent and inclusive. It means shifting from crisis response to prevention. It means ensuring digital governance protects human rights and empowers the Global South. And it means securing sustainable, untied financing so the UN isn’t dependent on politicized, earmarked contributions that limit its autonomy.
There are still bright spots. Agencies like UNICEF, UNDP, UN Women, UNFPA, and ITU offer glimpses of a people-centered UN that delivers. They touch lives, restore dignity, and foster opportunity. But even they must become more efficient, better coordinated, and more sustainably financed to meet today’s challenges.
The UN’s 80th anniversary must not be a celebration of institutional survival. It must be a reckoning. If the UN does not reform itself, it will not be dismantled, it will simply be bypassed. Regional alliances, private networks, and unaccountable tech actors will fill the vacuum. And that alternative is far less accountable.
This is our organization. Its future will depend on whether Member States are prepared to match words with action. Because the world still needs a functioning, principled United Nations not as a nostalgic echo of past peace conferences, but as a living engine for justice, equity, and cooperation.
If the UN is to earn another 80 years, we must return to its founding purpose: not power, not privilege, but people.
