As major powers act unilaterally, experts say UN faces crisis in New York

As world leaders gather in New York for the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), experts say the institution is battling an existential crisis of funding, relevance and Security Council gridlock.

Major conflicts appear intractable, and powers like the United States and Russia can bend the UN’s Security Council to their will; member states are looking for new mechanisms to bring accountability to the venue and for a new secretary-general to voice their concerns. The body has been accused of failing to stop what its own experts have said is a genocide in Gaza.

World leaders are not under any illusion that the UNGA is in good health, said Daniel Forti, head of UN Affairs at the International Crisis Group. Yet many still understand the venue’s power.

“The vast majority of leaders, from small states, from middle powers, and even a few from major powers, recognise the importance of a UN that is a global conversation platform,” Forti said.

Trying to weigh in where the Security Council fails

The UN is juggling multiple conflicts – from high-profile wars involving Iran to the often overlooked catastrophes in Sudan and Myanmar.

In the Ukraine war, the UN says more civilians were killed in the first eight months of 2026 than in the whole of 2025, and even NATO powers now say they worry about spillover into their countries.

Russia has repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions, but Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continued to appear before the UNGA to urge member states to help stop Moscow.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy spoke for the fifth time before the assembly since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, urging leaders to further tighten economic measures meant to punish Moscow despite its vetoes of Security Council resolutions.

“Many of you here have seen more than once how the abuse of the veto at the UN weakens the world and pushes peace further away,” Zelenskyy said.

In the Israeli war on Gaza, the UN has labelled Israel’s conduct there a genocide, but it has struggled to exercise real agency. Security Council resolutions have been repeatedly vetoed, and UN relief agencies have been targeted by Israel without any accountability.

The ongoing war between the US, Israel and Iran is having economic impacts across the globe and threatens to plunge Yemen back into a civil war.

“From Ukraine, to Gaza, and Sudan, and also with what’s happening now in Iran, the veto problem leaves the UN hamstrung,” said Alanna O’Malley, professor and chair of Global Governance and Wealth and head of the Department of History at Erasmus University.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Al Jazeera’s James Bays this week that these conflicts were having real humanitarian impacts worldwide, including reduced food access, rising fuel prices, and global inflation.

The UNGA will allow the opportunity for some discussions for parties involved in these kinds of conflicts, but it is unlikely they can reach major agreements, said Forti.

But the assembly is still the only forum where all 193 member states are equal, and nations have tried to invoke new procedures and reach back into historical mechanisms to try and mitigate the veto deadlocks, O’Malley said.

A 1950 resolution, dating from a deadlock over the Korean War, has allowed the UNGA to debate issues vetoed in the Security Council. And in 2022, an impasse over Ukraine generated a new mechanism forcing any permanent council representative – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US, often called the P5 – to come before the UNGA and explain when it uses the veto.

“The idea is to build more accountability into the system for the P5, to make the veto not just harder to use, but also ensure it uses a lot of political capital,” O’Malley said.

Calls for reforms have only increased since 2023 and Israel’s war on Gaza, O’Malley said, with “unprecedented” majority votes in the UNGA challenging the Security Council.

Getting major powers to buy in

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the UNGA, though, is remaining relevant as major global powers go their own way.

The administration of US President Trump has pushed through its own Board of Peace, a body that has accomplished few of its goals but has secured Security Council approval and claims to take on responsibilities previously handled by UN agencies, like distributing aid or managing refugees.

Unhappy with the UN, Trump has also imposed sanctions on the body’s special rapporteurs, as well as organisations like the International Criminal Court.

Washington, though, may not be the only government looking to strike out on its own.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the US this week, but he will not be attending the UNGA. He last addressed the body in 2021 via video, but this year he will skip it altogether, opting instead for one-on-one talks with US President Trump. China has positive views of the UN, often using the Security Council to weigh in on global issues, Forti said, but it is also looking for alternatives, through venues like BRICS and the SCO, to strengthen multilateralism.

The impetus to look for alternatives to the UN, even Secretary Guterres admits, is driven by the fact that the Security Council is unable to pass binding resolutions in the most controversial situations, because permanent members can simply veto them based on their own interests.

Guterres told Al Jazeera this week that kind of inaction was creating an “environment of impunity”, where the behaviour of major global powers was inspiring middle powers and others to “believe that they can do whatever they want because nothing will happen to them”.

 

The search for the next secretary-general

Guterres’s term ends on December 31, and the Security Council is expected to announce its recommendation for who will replace him.

“We had a secretary-general who didn’t have a lot of political capital to expend to solve these conflicts, and he hasn’t taken great initiative on a lot of them,” said O’Malley.

Guterres did, for example, draw on rarely used Article 99 powers in 2023 to bring the Gaza issue before the Security Council. But the UN also faces major funding problems, with major donors like the US cutting back, making it difficult to deliver aid in places like the West Bank and Gaza. “So he [Guterres] also has no actual financial capital,” O’Malley said.

Candidates to replace Guterres must win at least nine of the 15 votes from the council, and avoid a veto by any of the P5, to be put before the UNGA for a vote.

Forti said member states are looking for someone to refocus on preventing wars, and also deal with criticism that the UN has become unwieldy and costly.

“They will have to balance the UN’s diplomatic work, its impact, with financial cuts and racing to the bottom,” Forti said.