The answer to attacks on the UN is to revitalise it – not sideline it

There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen, so said Vladimir Lenin.

The start of 2026 has brought too many of the latter. The US abduction of the president of a sovereign country in Venezuela and threats to annex Greenland have exposed just how little power the United Nations has to enforce the rules of international law.

Donald Trump has pointed to the UN’s irrelevance as justification for taking matters into his own hands in the establishment of his so-called Board of Peace, which not only circumvents the UN, but seeks to replace it with a privately-controlled entity in which the Chair has ultimate veto power.

Leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney now explicitly acknowledge both the weaknesses of the world order we have known since the Second World War – and the fact that it no longer exists.

We should make no mistake: this is an existential moment for the promise that commonly-agreed rules would make us all safer.

The likely trajectory is a shift towards a mercantilist, "might makes right" world where politics dominate over rules; territory is confiscated by the most powerful; and the comforts and safety we have enjoyed for the past 80 years fade away. It is a world where we may be forced to send our children to war; and where the UN is impotent to challenge these dynamics.

The United Nations Charter emerged from the ashes of the Second World War. Visionary leaders agreed that to avoid the devastation of conflict, we needed rules and an institution to govern them.

In its history, the UN has helped prevent nuclear war between the US and Russia and pushed to maintain peace in many post-conflict settings. It oversaw decolonisation; eradicated diseases, advanced human rights, helped reduce poverty; and contributed to the fastest declines in child and maternal mortality in the history of our species – in many of those cases, using aid pledged from its Member States.

Yet it is far from a perfect institution.

In the words of Dag Hammarskjöld, its second secretary-general, the UN was created not to take us to heaven but to protect us from hell. In recent years, it has failed to protect the people of Gaza, of Ukraine, of Sudan and many other places, from the hell they are living through.

On the current trajectory, everything the UN stands for is at risk, leaving a shell of an institution with bureaucrats debating meaningless resolutions without power or purpose.

Thankfully there is another path.

When the UN was created in 1945, its founders knew it would have to evolve as the world changed.

Then US President Harry Truman said: “This charter … will be expanded and improved as time goes on. No one claims that it is now a final or a perfect instrument. It has not been poured into any fixed mould. Changing world conditions will require readjustments.”

The Charter therefore included Article 109, which calls for a review conference to be held within 10 years, to update the UN’s rules.

But 80 years later, this promise is yet to be fulfilled; each time the idea was raised, it was deemed not the right time.

This is a message we still hear today, even as the UN has become an irrelevant player in its core purpose of maintaining peace and security.

But as the current world order crumbles around us, we have an opportunity to re-mould the UN Charter for a new era - to build “from this fracture”, as Carney put it, “something better, stronger, and more just.”

Already endorsed by countries like Brazil and South Africa, as well as smaller states who feel the system isn’t serving them, a UN Charter review conference can be called by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the UN General Assembly and any nine of the 15 Security Council members – meaning it cannot be vetoed.

The negotiation for updated governance systems – which will be undertaken by governments – could tackle a range of issues, from AI to the climate crisis. But in particular it could address three dysfunctions:

First, abuse of the veto: imagine a Security Council that could actually take decisions in the interest of peace and security, rather than the national interest of the five permanent members (US, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom). Imagine a Council that is more accountable to other UN bodies, such as the General Assembly, where every country has one vote.

Second, enforcement powers: imagine a UN capable of enforcing international law through universal jurisdiction of international courts or by increasing the binding powers of resolutions passed by the General Assembly.

Third, the delicate balancing act between national sovereignty, a core principle of our international relations, and the interdependent world of today: imagine a world in which collective solutions to global challenges are co-created between governments, businesses and civil society. These transnational collaborations could be more innovative, dynamic and likely to succeed than outcomes of inter-governmental negotiations.

Some fear that reviewing the UN Charter at a moment of polarisation risks resulting in something worse, but in recent weeks, that risk calculus has changed, as the status quo looks more and more dangerous.

Others are skeptical that a UN intergovernmental process is the right response to major powers doing what they want. Yes, economic and military heavyweights will ignore the rules when they want to, but the rest of the world can build its own strength through collective power.

Kickstarting a review would allow states representing the majority of the world’s population – many of whom were still under colonial rule when the Charter was negotiated – to co-create a vision for the future with solutions fit for the era we find ourselves in.

Heba Aly leads Article 109, a coalition mobilising governments to update the UN Charter

Dr David McNair is Executive Director at ONE Data and Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project