Introduction
The United Nations, established in the aftermath of the Second World War to prevent conflict and promote international cooperation, faces an unprecedented crisis of relevance in the twenty-first century. From its paralysis in the face of the Syrian civil war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to its failure to deliver on climate commitments and sustainable development goals, the UN's institutional limitations have become glaringly apparent. This essay argues that international organisations like the United Nations are no longer effective, as their structures, processes, and enforcement mechanisms are fundamentally mismatched to the challenges of the contemporary world.
The UN Security Council's veto system paralyses the organisation's ability to respond to major conflicts and humanitarian crises.
Explain
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France, each possess the power to veto any substantive resolution, regardless of the scale of human suffering at stake. This Cold War-era structure means that any crisis involving the strategic interests of a permanent member is effectively beyond the UN's reach. The veto has been wielded repeatedly to block action on atrocities, transforming the Security Council from a guarantor of collective security into an arena of great-power rivalry.
Example
Russia vetoed at least 16 Security Council resolutions on Syria between 2011 and 2023, shielding its ally Bashar al-Assad from international accountability as the conflict claimed over 500,000 lives and displaced 13 million people. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia predictably vetoed a resolution condemning its own aggression, rendering the Security Council impotent in the face of the most significant interstate war in Europe since 1945. Singapore's Ambassador to the UN, Burhan Gafoor, explicitly lamented this paralysis in his 2022 General Assembly address, stating that the veto had rendered the Council 'unable to act when action is most urgently needed' and calling for reforms to prevent abuse of the veto power.
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This demonstrates that international organisations like the UN are no longer effective, as the structural defect of the veto system ensures that the Security Council is paralysed precisely when decisive action is most critical.
International organisations have consistently failed to enforce their own agreements and resolutions, undermining their credibility and authority.
Explain
The effectiveness of any governance institution ultimately depends on its ability to enforce compliance with its decisions. International organisations, lacking sovereign authority and independent enforcement mechanisms, rely on the voluntary compliance of member states, which is routinely withheld when national interests conflict with international obligations. This enforcement deficit transforms resolutions, treaties, and agreements into aspirational documents with no binding force, steadily eroding the credibility of the institutions that produce them.
Example
The Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015, set a target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, yet by 2023 global temperatures had already reached 1.48 degrees above pre-industrial levels and national emissions reduction pledges remained collectively insufficient to meet the target. The United States withdrew from the agreement entirely under President Trump in 2020, rejoined under President Biden in 2021, and then withdrew again in 2025, demonstrating the fragility of UN-brokered commitments. Similarly, North Korea developed nuclear weapons in direct violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and multiple UN Security Council resolutions, with the UN unable to prevent or reverse this proliferation.
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This confirms that international organisations are no longer effective, as their chronic inability to enforce their own decisions means that resolutions and treaties amount to little more than aspirational rhetoric with no meaningful impact on state behaviour.
The composition and governance structures of international organisations are anachronistic and unrepresentative, undermining their legitimacy and decision-making quality.
Explain
The governance structures of major international organisations were designed in the mid-twentieth century and reflect the geopolitical realities of that era rather than the contemporary world. The UN Security Council's five permanent members do not include any nation from Africa, Latin America, or South Asia, despite these regions comprising the majority of the world's population. This democratic deficit undermines the legitimacy of decisions made by these bodies and breeds resentment among the underrepresented majority, reducing compliance and cooperation.
Example
Africa, with 54 nations and 1.4 billion people, has no permanent seat on the UN Security Council, despite being the focus of the majority of the Council's agenda items on peacekeeping and conflict resolution. India, the world's most populous country with 1.4 billion people, has been denied permanent membership despite decades of campaigning, as have regional powers such as Brazil, Japan, and Germany. Singapore's former Foreign Minister, K. Shanmugam, has repeatedly advocated for Security Council reform, arguing that the Council's failure to reflect contemporary geopolitical realities has eroded its authority and effectiveness among the broader UN membership.
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This illustrates that international organisations like the UN are no longer effective, as their outdated governance structures deprive them of the legitimacy and representativeness necessary to command the respect and compliance of the international community.
Counter-Argument
Defenders of the UN argue that judging it solely by Security Council failures ignores the life-saving work of specialised agencies: WHO's COVAX facility delivered over 1.9 billion vaccine doses, UNICEF vaccinated 400 million children against measles in 2022, and the World Food Programme fed 160 million people across 120 countries. They contend that these achievements represent an irreplaceable contribution to global welfare.
Rebuttal
While the humanitarian achievements of UN agencies are commendable, they do not address the fundamental charge of institutional ineffectiveness on the issues that matter most: preventing war, enforcing international law, and holding aggressors accountable. Russia vetoed at least 16 Security Council resolutions on Syria as over 500,000 people died, then vetoed a resolution condemning its own invasion of Ukraine. The persistent gap between the Paris Agreement's targets and actual emission reductions, with the world on track for 2.5 to 2.9 degrees of warming, demonstrates that the UN's structural paralysis extends beyond conflict resolution to the existential challenge of climate change.
Conclusion
In conclusion, international organisations like the United Nations are no longer effective in addressing the most critical challenges of the contemporary world, as their anachronistic structures, veto-paralysed decision-making, and lack of enforcement capacity render them incapable of decisive action when it is most needed. The gap between the UN's lofty rhetoric and its operational reality has eroded public trust and emboldened unilateral actors who see international institutions as obstacles to be circumvented rather than frameworks to be respected. Without fundamental structural reform, these organisations will continue to decline into irrelevance.
Introduction
The assertion that international organisations like the United Nations are no longer effective reflects an unrealistic standard of success that ignores both the enormous constraints under which these institutions operate and the quiet but indispensable work they continue to perform. While headline failures in conflict resolution attract disproportionate attention, the UN system's achievements in public health, humanitarian relief, and norm-setting remain unmatched by any alternative institution. This essay contends that international organisations, despite their imperfections, remain effective and essential components of the global order.
UN specialised agencies continue to deliver transformative results in public health, humanitarian relief, and development that no other institution can replicate.
Explain
Judging the effectiveness of international organisations solely by the Security Council's failures in conflict resolution ignores the enormous and often life-saving work performed by the broader UN system. Agencies such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees operate on a scale and with a reach that no national government or private organisation can match. These agencies save millions of lives annually and represent the most effective mechanism humanity has developed for coordinated international action on shared challenges.
Example
The World Health Organization coordinated the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, establishing the COVAX facility that delivered over 1.9 billion vaccine doses to 146 countries by 2023, ensuring that developing nations were not entirely excluded from access to life-saving vaccines. UNICEF vaccinated over 400 million children against measles in 2022 alone, preventing an estimated 56 million deaths since 2000. The World Food Programme, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, fed over 160 million people across 120 countries in 2022. Singapore actively contributes to these efforts, having pledged over US$10 million to the COVAX facility and deploying Singapore Armed Forces personnel on UN peacekeeping missions in Timor-Leste and the Golan Heights.
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This demonstrates that international organisations remain highly effective, as the life-saving work of UN specialised agencies represents an irreplaceable contribution to global welfare that far outweighs the headline failures of the Security Council.
International organisations have been instrumental in establishing and maintaining global norms and legal frameworks that constrain state behaviour, even without formal enforcement mechanisms.
Explain
While international organisations cannot enforce compliance through coercive means, the norms, conventions, and legal frameworks they establish exert powerful moral and reputational pressure on states. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Law of the Sea, and numerous other UN-brokered instruments have profoundly shaped the behaviour of states by defining what is acceptable in international relations. Even when states violate these norms, the very existence of a normative framework provides a basis for accountability, advocacy, and eventual justice.
Example
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Singapore ratified in 1994, has been critical to Singapore's national interests as a small island state dependent on freedom of navigation and maritime trade. The convention's framework for resolving territorial disputes provided the legal basis for Singapore's successful case against Malaysia over sovereignty of Pedra Branca at the International Court of Justice in 2008. More broadly, the norm against territorial conquest, established through the UN Charter, has contributed to a dramatic decline in interstate wars since 1945, with the number of battle deaths per capita falling by over 90% compared to the first half of the twentieth century.
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This shows that international organisations remain effective, as the normative and legal frameworks they have established continue to shape state behaviour in ways that promote peace, stability, and the rule of law, even in the absence of formal enforcement mechanisms.
International organisations provide an indispensable platform for multilateral diplomacy, enabling dialogue and compromise that prevent conflicts from escalating.
Explain
The most important function of international organisations is often not the resolutions they pass but the diplomatic space they create for adversaries to communicate, negotiate, and find compromises short of armed conflict. The General Assembly, specialised conferences, and informal back-channel meetings facilitated by the UN provide forums for dialogue that would otherwise not exist, particularly between states that lack formal diplomatic relations. This quiet diplomatic function is difficult to quantify but has prevented countless crises from escalating into wars.
Example
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was negotiated over two years under the auspices of the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and averting a potential military confrontation in the Middle East. The UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative in 2022, though ultimately short-lived, facilitated the export of over 32 million tonnes of grain from Ukrainian ports during the Russia-Ukraine war, averting a global food crisis. Singapore has been a strong advocate for multilateral diplomacy, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong emphasising at the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue that small states like Singapore depend on a rules-based international order upheld by multilateral institutions, as the alternative of a might-makes-right world would leave small nations at the mercy of larger powers.
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This confirms that international organisations like the UN remain effective, as their irreplaceable role in facilitating diplomatic dialogue and multilateral negotiation has prevented countless conflicts and remains essential for small states that depend on a rules-based order for their survival.
Counter-Argument
Critics emphasise that the Security Council's veto system has rendered the UN paralysed on major conflicts, with Russia vetoing at least 16 resolutions on Syria while over 500,000 people died, and then vetoing a resolution condemning its own invasion of Ukraine. They argue that the organisation's anachronistic governance structures, which exclude Africa, Latin America, and South Asia from permanent membership, deprive it of legitimacy.
Rebuttal
Structural imperfections do not equate to ineffectiveness, and the alternative to imperfect international organisations is not better organisations but no organisations at all. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provided Singapore with the legal basis for its successful sovereignty case over Pedra Branca at the International Court of Justice. The norm against territorial conquest established through the UN Charter has contributed to a 90% decline in battle deaths per capita since 1945. As Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has repeatedly emphasised, small states depend existentially on a rules-based international order upheld by multilateral institutions, and dismantling these institutions without viable alternatives would leave small nations at the mercy of larger powers.
Conclusion
Ultimately, declaring international organisations like the United Nations no longer effective is a dangerous overstatement that risks undermining the very multilateral framework on which global stability depends. While reform is undoubtedly necessary, the UN and its agencies continue to perform irreplaceable functions in humanitarian relief, public health, peacekeeping, and the establishment of international norms. In a world of resurgent nationalism and transnational threats, the need for effective international cooperation has never been greater, and dismantling or delegitimising existing institutions without viable alternatives would be an act of profound self-harm.