Global problems demand global solutions.

Are the UN and other international and multilateral organizations able to deal with societal problems, climate change, or military conflicts? Do they hold enough power, and do they possess adequate legitimacy to operate with sufficient effectiveness?

Global governance institutions like the UN, the International Monetary Fund, and other UN special agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations, seem so ineffective in today's world because, in the aftermath of WW2, when these institutions were created, the world was a very different place. In today's world, in which people have more agency, resources, influence, awareness, and expectations to be heard than ever before, we need more inclusive and responsive global governance institutions to address the concerns and problems that matter for humankind. That means fairly addressing climate change, the impact of technological disruption, and inequality. The urgent problems of this century are complex. And complex challenges cannot be effectively managed by the state-centric, bureaucratic, closed institutions of the 21st century. They need to prioritize the interests of people and of the planet above the narrow interests of states.

Some organizations are based on the members' desire to attain shared goals, and some of them are created to promote benefits for the countries involved. A different type of body is built to ensure defined agency goals are achieved and shaped through ongoing negotiations. The United Nations and its various agencies are prime examples of this model. Weak enforcement renders the body largely ineffective, reducing it to a forum for discussion rather than action (World Bank and G20). International bodies and agreements are largely shaped by conveniences and bureaucracy rather than actual effectiveness. They are supported by national politicians who see international agencies as tools for boosting their own prestige and domestic approval.

The organizations effectively become instruments of, and dependent on, the dominant power that not only supports the mission but also enforces decisions through superior economic or military power. The IMF, the UN and its agencies, the World Bank, and many other international institutions were designed to promote global policy-making. This goal has largely failed; governments ceded sovereignty to international bureaucracies or to dominant foreign powers. Many countries joined these bodies to avoid losing prestige or being sidelined from the international community.

Those international organizations devoted to guaranteeing peace have failed miserably. Also, bodies designed to provide aid to the poor, or financial resources and expertise to countries facing difficulties, have not produced the expected results either. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 specific targets are focused on the well-being of people and the planet. States have agreed that meeting the SDGs by 2030 is very important. New technological tools directly involve masses of individuals in deliberating the work of global governance institutions. International organizations are criticized as impotent in times of crisis and, in other situations, for being too powerful. Multilateral institutions face deficits in legal, institutional, material, and ideational power, thus reducing their ability to deliver expectations.

Overall, existing international organizations are insufficient to tackle current and future challenges. First, to make global governance more efficient, it needs to upgrade interstate cooperation and strengthen existing multilateral institutions, which requires difficult changes in the UN Charter. And it is not clear if majority voting would be based on states, population, economic power, or other criteria (it would be correct… One state, one vote). Existing international organizations should be reformed (even if it seems difficult to reform) and should enhance new modes of global governance that are less dependent on the will of states and politicians. These new modes could include cooperation through the involvement of non-state actors and trans-local cooperation for a fundamental shift toward more supranational and democratic forms of global governance, which includes consideration of new fully empowered institutions.

Humanity is the principal driver for responding to crises, whether triggered by conflict, violence, or natural or man-made disasters, and humanitarian actors should be autonomous. They are not to be subject to control, subordination, or influence by economic, political, military, or other forces, and should refrain from taking sides in hostilities. Global institutions face challenges from conflicting national interests, a lack of enforcement power, insufficient resources, bureaucratic complexity, and issues with trust and coordination among member states. In the case of agreements, national bureaucracies fail to act independently of their international counterparts and maintain their own positions.

Each of these organizations operates with numerous staff members—the IMF employs over 3,000 people, while the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization each have more than 13,000 employees. The inefficiency of international institutions lies in the conflict of interests between state and global incentives and the weakness of international institutions in enforcement power that should ensure state compliance.

Conflicts (wars), human rights, global health, financial governance, international trade, regionalization, development, and the environment are issues that international organizations have been created to address. Reasons for inefficiency of global organizations are: Conflicting national interests, weak enforcement and coordination, lack of resources, declining public trust, operational and structural weaknesses, and complex bureaucratic processes.

Global institutions fail to effectively address major challenges, which erode public confidence, challenge their legitimacy and authority, and hinder the enforcement of their decisions. Inefficiency and ineffectiveness of global institutions weaken broader multilateral cooperation that is essential for tackling shared global problems, and they fail to mount coordinated and effective responses to pressing global challenges.

“Saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war” was the main motivation for creating the UN after the devastation of the two world wars. The United Nations has become a bureaucratically driven institution that continues to exist because dismantling it is costlier than letting it persist. Debates about the raison d’être of international bodies have intensified. Yet, the prevailing narrative favors some reforms over dismantlement.

We shouldn’t accept their existence because of their shortcomings. Can we consider the UN successful after the bloody wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, and the current Israel-Palestine, Ukraine-Russia, and Sudan conflicts? The UN’s 193 member countries contribute to the organization’s annual budget of over 50 billion dollars to make it function. The UN has played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and has deployed forces to monitor ceasefires and create conditions for peace in Colombia, Liberia, and Tajikistan. But the UN failed to intervene in a timely manner to prevent genocide in Rwanda and now in Palestine.

The UN’s effectiveness in preventing and ending war is limited by the Security Council’s veto power and its inability to force member states to act, leading to failures in maintaining global peace and security. Over the decades, the UN has helped end conflicts by issuing ceasefire directives, deploying peacekeeping operations to monitor peace, and mediating disputes (with success in Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Guatemala, Namibia, and Tajikistan). The UN uses peacekeeping missions for the prevention and management of conflict and helps countries transition from war to peace. But in many conflicts, the UN failed to keep the peace as a result of indecision or selective application of international norms, as in the wars in Bosnia, Syria, Rwanda, Ukraine, and Palestine.

UN power, outlined in the United Nations Charter, includes establishing peacekeeping operations, enacting international sanctions, and authorizing military action. The UN used force in armed peacekeeping operations in 1956 to address the Suez crisis and in 1960 in the Congo. In the genocide in Rwanda, where the Hutu killed 1 million innocent people, neither any country nor the UN did anything to stop it. During the Iraq War of 2003, the UN didn’t make any moves to stop, prevent, or intervene against the American invasion.

In Indochina and Vietnam, the civil war in Cambodia, the Golan Heights (still occupied by Israel), Haiti, and current conflicts, the UN proved ineffective. The reason for UN inefficiency is the right of veto of the five superpowers in the Security Council. And this flaw in the UN Charter must be amended. Another reason is the enormous influence of the largest contributors (the US, Germany, Japan, the UK, Canada, China, Norway, and France). It is true that powerful nations have much greater influence over the UN than smaller countries, and they twist the system to their benefit through blatant bullying, bribery, or intimidation.

And maybe without the UN, powerful countries would just do whatever they want (NATO and the most powerful countries attacked Serbia without UN permission). So, having to go through the Security Council to make a legal case is much slower and more complicated than just invading a country whenever one feels like it. No successful diplomacy or other intervention by the UN. Plenty of wars break out, and there are no successful efforts to stop them. The UN is quite useless whenever it comes to stopping genocides. Only talk and no action.

The UN diplomats and world leaders might spend months discussing whether a genocide is a ‘genocide.’ To protect their funding and job security, they prefer to call an obvious genocide an ‘atrocity.’ The UN could stop war only if the UN Security Council had no veto, and no individual country had greater status than another. A kind of punitive sanction might also be useful to introduce against members who disobey decisions of the majority. This will require a degree of political will.

The UN is a huge and expensive apparatus, and considering the catastrophic situation in the world, there is an urgent need to reform the UN and its numerous inefficient agencies or create a completely new and efficient international body in which each country will delegate representatives from the fields of science, academia, culture, and sport, exclusively without political representatives. Diplomacy should always be the first choice when addressing international conflicts. Nations have to engage in peaceful dialogue and negotiations to prevent conflicts from escalating.

Promoting peace and security is integral to UN missions. Humanitarian aid is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote safety and stability. UN agencies continue to deliver the majority of humanitarian aid. They have achieved significant life-saving results and success in global health, reducing child mortality and eradicating diseases. They also face challenges like funding shortfalls amid growing global needs, limiting the potential impact and reach of organizations. Organizations like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the International Red Cross (IRC) offer vital coordination in complex, conflict-ridden environments and provide specialized expertise in areas like health, food security, and refugee protection.

They are increasingly using direct cash transfers, considered more efficient in getting aid to end-users. (Israeli Defense Forces are shooting at humanitarian convoys and preventing aid to Palestinians). Humanitarian aid has an outsized impact that can save lives, alleviate suffering, and uphold human dignity amid crises and their aftermath. Factors such as administrative costs, the complexity of coordinating large-scale apparatus, and the sheer scale of humanitarian needs in today’s turbulent world can hinder overall efficiency.

The most humanitarian needs were not met because of a funding gap of billions of dollars in humanitarian response plans. Sufficient volumes of funding and effective delivery mechanisms are key to the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian responses. Unfortunately, the USAID decision to halt aid endangers the lives of millions and presents a major obstacle to recovery. The UN has also announced it will end its Lebanon peacekeeping mission next year, after US and Israeli pressure. The UN expressed concern about the situation in Gaza, while the United States denied visas to Palestinian Authority leaders for the 80th UN General Assembly in September this year.

International organizations are showing unwillingness to prevent the brutal actions of the Israeli Defence Forces in the genocide against Palestinians, taking place every day before the eyes of all humanity, including Israeli bombings of neighboring countries and the brutal killing of civilians, children, health and humanitarian workers, and journalists.

And what else needs to happen in order for international institutions to react, to prevent this, and to justify the reason for their existence? The international community, the UN Security Council, OHCHR, and ICJ need to take all measures within their power immediately to stop acts of genocide and incitement to genocide and to take immediate and effective measures to allow aid in Gaza. Immediate recognition of Palestine as a state and as the 194th UN member is far more than symbolic.

Western countries prefer to spend billions on armaments, while the funds of international humanitarian organizations and the UN remain insufficient to provide aid to vulnerable populations threatened by wars and to create conditions for peace. If states would allocate even just 1% of the amount they spend on armaments to helping the poor, the hungry, and displaced people, and for the well-being of societies, the world would be a better place to live… A world without weapons and profits for the military industry, without wars and millions of deaths.

We don’t need security among friends. The solution for a great life: make friends.