At 80 years the UN needs deep introspection

Solly Rakgomo | Monday September 22, 2025 10:16

With UN leadership commemorating eight decades of multilateralism with a gathering on “the path ahead for a more inclusive and responsive multilateral system”, the institution finds itself mired in a profound crisis of credibility, funding and function.

The new Assembly president, Annalena Baerbock, has promised a new agenda that includes some renewal, but these aspirations clash against a punishing reality. The UN is financially crippled, politically fragmented, and struggling to uphold its founding mission in an age of resurgent nationalism. As it turns 80, the gap between its noble ideals and its tangible impact has never been starker, or more threatening.

At the heart of this anniversary lies Secretary-General António Guterres’ “UN80 Initiative”, a campaign to streamline and refocus the organisation. Yet, one must question whether this represents a meaningful transformation or merely bureaucratic repackaging. The initiative, while laudable in its intent to modernise, comes out symptomatically UN: a top-down reform initiative that fails to address the root ailment, which is the anachronic and undemocratic power structures entrenched in the Security Council. True “streamlining” cannot occur while the veto power remains a tool for geopolitical deadlock, allowing atrocities to persist unchecked. The initiative risks becoming another chapter in the UN’s long history of prioritising process over palpable progress, of confusing administrative reshuffling for genuine change.

This structural inertia, exacerbated by a paralysing financial crisis, was largely orchestrated by its most powerful and prolific funder. The United States administration, which provided some $13 billion in 2023, under the Trump administration, has undertaken widespread cuts to foreign aid, including capping donations to UN agencies. This fiscal stranglehold has as Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group observed, has placed the UN in a terribly unsound monetary state.

This whipsawing of U.S. policy, withdrawing from the Paris Accord and the WHO under Trump, then rejoining only to face the threat of another withdrawal, shows a devastating vulnerability. Against this backdrop of internal reform struggles and external financial pressures that the 80th UNGA session unfolds. Procedural formalities of the first week will soon give way to the glittering rhetoric of the high-level week, its sideline diplomacy, and the array of meetings on development, climate, and health. But one must look past the ceremony. The commemoration of the 80th anniversary, intended to be celebratory, rather reflects the mirror to an institution on the brink.

The theme of inclusivity rings hollow when the organisation’s architecture perpetuates a post-World War II power dynamic, marginalising the Global South. The promise of responsiveness feels empty when the body is often reduced to the stage for performative politics rather than an engine for binding action, developing non-binding resolutions that gather dust as crises gather steam. Ultimately, the 80th session is just a meeting; it’s a metaphor. It represents the enduring hope for global collaboration, but also of bitter recognition of its boundaries.

The UN was born from the ashes of a world war with a mandate “to save succeeding generations the scourge of war”. Eighty years on, as wars rage from Gaza to Ukraine, and the climate crises escalate unabated, the mandate remains tragically unfulfilled. The question is no longer whether the UN needs reform—that is an old and tired refrain. The critical and uncomfortable question we must ask as the speeches reverberate in the General Assembly Hall is whether the UN, in its current form, can survive another 80 years without a radical, foundational reckoning. Or will future generations see it as a well-intentioned monument to an era of cooperation that never truly was?