Eighty years old, the United Nations (UN) stands as a monument to both human aspiration and bureaucratic intransigence, a palimpsest upon which the ambitions of a war-ravaged world were inscribed, only to be overwritten by the vexing realities of geopolitics, institutional inertia, and human frailty.
Inaugurated in 1945 with the solemnity of a global covenant, the UN was envisaged as a fulcrum for peace, dialogue, and collective governance. Yet even the most cursory examination of its history reveals an edifice riddled with paradoxes.
The oft-repeated anecdote of the UN Headquarters’ land being leased for a dollar is a simplification at best: in 1946, John D. Rockefeller Jr. expended $ 8.5 million to procure the site on Manhattan’s First Avenue and subsequently donated it to the fledgling organisation. While this gesture symbolised transnational magnanimity, it inadvertently highlighted the UN’s dependence upon the largesse of private patrons, a reliance that resonates ambiguously with its purported ethos of egalitarian universality.
Idealism vs. pragmatism
The genesis of the UN, however, stretches beyond the mere mechanics of institutional architecture.
Its conceptual prelude can be traced to the tumultuous wartime period when Franklin D. Roosevelt first coined the term ‘United Nations’ in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, an alliance of 26 countries committed to the defence of the Atlantic Charter and the codification of shared principles for a post-war international order.
Yet even from its inception, fissures between idealism and pragmatism were manifest. The first General Assembly, convened in January 1946 at Central Hall Westminster, London, included merely 15 member states, presaging the protracted struggle for truly global representativeness that would plague the institution throughout its existence.
The UN’s structural design, particularly the Security Council with its immutable veto power for the five permanent members, codified a hierarchy of influence that has often transformed deliberation into stalemate, rendering the body simultaneously a theatre of diplomacy and one of impotence.
A confounding dissonance
Despite these structural encumbrances, the UN has presided over notable, if uneven, achievements. The proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was a clarion articulation of normative aspiration, a codification of rights that has since informed national constitutions, international treaties, and the ethos of global civil society.
The establishment of peacekeeping missions, though marred by logistical and strategic shortcomings, has nonetheless forestalled larger conflagrations in several theatres, while agencies such as UNICEF, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) have effected tangible amelioration in public health, poverty alleviation, and educational access across continents.
The Sustainable Development Goals, articulated in the 2030 Agenda, are emblematic of the UN’s enduring capacity to synthesise complex challenges into a coherent normative framework, demanding active engagement from both governments and corporate actors in pursuit of a more sustainable, equitable world.
Yet, for all its laudable ambitions, the UN has been repeatedly undermined by the very human vices it purports to regulate. Its institutional history is punctuated by egregious failures: the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the drawn-out inertia in addressing the Syrian civil war, and the convoluted management of the Oil-for-Food Programme epitomise the chasm between intention and execution.
Beyond strategic miscalculations, the UN’s internal culture has been beset by endemic dysfunction. Surveys reveal that a significant proportion of staff — estimates ranging from 28% in 2017 to nearly 40% in recent internal audits — have experienced harassment, discrimination, or abuse of authority. Women and junior staff bear the brunt of these violations, encountering both overt sexual harassment and more insidious forms of professional marginalisation.
Even the ostensibly protective mechanisms, such as the Office of Internal Oversight Services, have frequently been critiqued as inadequate, slow, or complicit, leaving whistleblowers exposed to retaliation.
Emma Reilly, a former UN human rights officer, characterised her own dismissal following the exposure of Chinese Government collusion as “unique and specific” retaliation, an indictment of a culture wherein the courageous are penalised and the cautious rewarded.
Peter A. Gallo, an ex-investigator, has been equally trenchant, observing that “in the UN, sadly, it is the venal, the vindictive, and the corrupt who thrive,” a caustic appraisal that renders any romanticised notion of the organisation’s moral rectitude both dubious and perilous.
Such criticisms are compounded by structural inequities. The veto power vested in the Security Council’s permanent five has been repeatedly deployed not in the service of peace, but in defence of parochial national interests, often prolonging conflict and amplifying global injustice.
Ian Williams, in ‘UNtold,’ notes with sardonic acumen that “there is a lot of naivete and hubris within our mix of personalities. That’s probably our worst crime,” highlighting the cognitive dissonance between the UN’s lofty rhetoric and the quotidian realities of power, ambition, and institutional self-preservation. The result is a dissonant organisation: simultaneously venerated, reviled, essential, and ineffectual — a paradox that confounds both scholars and practitioners.
A crucible of contradiction
Moreover, the UN’s efforts to address harassment, exploitation, and corruption, while increasingly formalised, remain hamstrung by cultural inertia and administrative sluggishness.
The September 2025 guidance document on Prevention and Response to Sexual Harassment (PRSH) epitomises the institution’s contemporary approach: an elaborate, meticulously structured ‘recipe’ for training facilitators, enhancing skills, and creating a survivor-centred, bystander-empowered culture.
Yet, for all its procedural sophistication — townhalls; interactive scenarios; post-training Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment (PSEAH) champions; and cross-entity collaboration — the document also tacitly acknowledges the intractability of entrenched behaviours, signalling a persistent gap between policy and practice.
In essence, the UN remains both a laboratory of innovation and a crucible of contradiction, where procedural precision often masks deep-seated cultural apathy.
In synthesising these contradictions, one confronts a disquieting yet unavoidable truth: the UN is an institution of paradox. It embodies the highest aspirations of international cooperation while being ensnared by the very human foibles it seeks to ameliorate.
It has saved lives, codified rights, and championed sustainability, yet it has also been complicit in prolonging conflict, enabling harassment, and tolerating corruption. It is revered and reviled, indispensable and frequently impotent, a global theatre where idealism, self-interest, and administrative inertia collide in a spectacle both instructive and sobering.
A mirror to global society
The reflections of former insiders provide a crucial corrective to the official narrative.
Michael Soussan’s wry observation that “what made this episode in our collective history possible was not so much the lies we told one another, but the lies we told ourselves” is emblematic of a broader institutional pathology: the UN, in its quotidian operations, often substitutes performative ritual for substantive intervention, consensus for action, and process for justice.
In this light, the United Nations emerges not merely as a vehicle for international cooperation, but as a mirror to global society itself — illuminating its contradictions, hypocrisies, and enduring aspirations.
The UN at 80 is neither a flawless panacea nor a mere paper tiger. To criticise the UN is not to negate its achievements but to recognise that, for all its symbolic and practical power, it remains a human enterprise, susceptible to the very failings, ambitions, and contradictions that define us all.
(The writer is an author based in Colombo)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)