As the United Nations begins its 80th session, the international organization is facing tough questions about its relevancy. CBC’s Kris Reyes asks: Is the UN still living up to its promise to save future generations from the scourge of war?

New York

The United Nations has entered its 80th session amid significant challenges, including political divisions among member states, financial constraints, and questions about its ability to prevent and resolve conflicts. Top UN officials acknowledge that the organization is under pressure, with more individual conflicts occurring globally than at any time since the Second World War. In response, the UN has launched the 'UN 80 Initiative,' which includes a $500 million budget cut and a push for structural reforms aimed at improving efficiency and impact.

Despite frustrations over the Security Council's veto power and the slow pace of change, many still see the UN as an essential forum for dialogue and international cooperation. The organization has grown from 51 founding members to 193 states, but its relevance depends on continued efforts to adapt and ensure broader ownership beyond a handful of powerful countries. UN leaders emphasize the importance of convening nations to prevent global conflict, even as the institution faces uncertainty about the success of its reforms.

After 80 years, is the UN still relevant?

As the United Nations begins its 80th session, a crisis call from its top leaders. It's the member states that divided do not allow the UN to work properly. At a time when the world may need it the most. We are facing this perfect storm, underfunded, overstretched, under attack. The UN is under pressure financially and politically. We're in the UN's General Assembly Hall where all 193 member countries have a seat. There's really no other place like it in the world. But this year, more than any other, the question that's being asked is this institution living up to its core promise to save future generations from the scourge of war? For that answer, we went up to the 37th floor of the Secretariat Building to talk to the person in charge of a new and massive project to transform the UN. There are many conflicts taking place in the world today. I think there are more individual conflicts than any time since the Second World War. We're not preventing them and we're not being able to stop them. And that's a simple reality which I think nobody can deny. To address that reality, the UN has laid out the UN 80 Initiative, an ambitious set of reforms that include a $500 million budget cut for 2026. We have to be more efficient. We have to be more impactful. We have to redesign our working methods. We have to take a hard look at our structures. When the UN was founded in 1945, it was never meant to be a world government. But it did empower the Security Council to deploy military forces. But the superpowers that hold permanent seats in the Council also hold veto power. The draft resolution has not been adopted. In the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Russia and the U.S. have used that power to block action. There is a risk if they go on. That paralysis of the Security Council is a source of impunity that undermines our work. As the UN grapples with questions of relevance and purpose, a reminder of the ideas that gave birth to this place can be found all over this massive complex. Artworks and monuments that speak to the promise of peace and the horrors of war. There's even a part of the Berlin Wall in the UN Gardens, a reminder that divisions between nations do fall. And as you enter the General Assembly Hall, this quote from its second Secretary General, that the UN was created not to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell. There was a sense of common purpose in 1945. And that, over the years, has gradually faded. Jean-Marie Guillénot is a professor at Columbia University, but also a former head of UN peacekeeping. He says it's on those missions that he saw how the UN made a difference. I had the frustrations of the Security Council, the cynical calculations and all that. But then I went to peacekeeping missions and I saw the people I was meant to help. In 80 years, the UN has gone from 51 founding nations to 193 member states, a major achievement that has its challenges, says Guillénot. There was not enough effort to transform the UN so that it would be owned not just by a handful of Western countries led by the United States, but by the whole world. Much will depend if there is a coalition of countries that is built around safeguarding the UN. Under-Secretary Ryder says there are no guarantees reforms will work, but his message is this. I believe it is the unique value of the United Nations that it does still command that convening power that the world so badly needs. The day that we forego the opportunity to come together and to dialogue and to talk, however difficult it is, is the day that we lose something perhaps irreparable. From the Secretary General, with less than two years left in his final term, this promise. So I'm not optimistic, I'm not pessimistic, I'm determined. I will not give up. Okay, so lots and lots of issues, Chris, but you know, it's true that many people still look here, look to that building for leadership. Yeah, absolutely. There's this famous quote by the former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It goes, if the UN did not exist, we would invent it. And that in a nutshell is the frustration of this place. 193 countries trying to make it work because there isn't an option. Being here at the UN, I'm sure you felt it, you could really sense that. It reminds you that if nations don't talk, they risk the very thing that created this place, global conflict, that in the words of the UN Charter, brought untold sorrow. Now, the world has changed a lot since then, and like many institutions, the UN has struggled to keep up. One positive thing, countries still show up here every year to talk. They do. All right, Chris Reyes, thank you.

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