The world needs an urgent conversation about the United Nations.
What does it do? The UN was created in 1945 after the end of World War II to prevent future devastating global conflicts, replacing the ineffective League of Nations. But what is it really doing? Why is it so invisible in world affairs, despite myriad entrenched violent endless wars? Many have been going on for 70 years, without any UN intervention.
It has a workforce estimated at 150,000 to 230,000, including various funds, programs, and agencies like UNICEF, the WHO and World Bank. Its core staff is over 44,000. Over 36,000 international civil servants manage the day-to-day operations and are spread across 467 duty stations globally.
The UNs' regular budget for 2026 is $3.45 billion, covering core organisational activities like peace and security, sustainable development and human rights. This is separate from its $5.38 billion peacekeeping budget and humanitarian funds, which are largely funded by voluntary contributions.
The US alone under President Trump is seeking to bring an end to conflicts in the Middle East that have dominated the region since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Africa has 54 countries struggling with civil wars, genocide, terrorism and roaming guerrilla military armies.
The UN has contributed virtually nothing of any substance to resolving world conflicts.
What does come to mind is its indirect funding of the travel arrangements for millions of migrants into Europe and the United States - a social failure. It has embraced a destructive culture of climate driven environmentalism. Its mismanagement left out China and India from the mix. These two manufacturing giants together produce half the world's carbon emissions. While western economies have declined under choking restrictions and are dismantling the cheap, affordable, available coal, oil and gas that makes the world modern and functioning.
Western countries have been coerced into self imposed limits on industrial manufacturing. Western farming has been targeted. A drive for an instant solution led to the rise of a second tier of renewable energy based on wind and solar, which has created an economic black hole transition, estimated to cost $275 trillion by 2050.
These turbines and panels have become symbols of waste, environmental degradation and collapsing industry, in particular steel manufacturing.
Instead of a quest for peace, the UN has driven the world to the edge of global war and fostered a new dark age of economic chaos.
All while highly paid UN officials jet around the world in sickening luxury. It was supposed to give us hope.