Do you agree with the view that despite the limitations in the functioning of the UN, it has distinguished and unique achievements to its credit? (2017, 15 Marks)
Dag Hammarskjöld supplied the yardstick at Berkeley in 1954: the UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell. Judged against the Charter’s promise to end “the scourge of war”, the record disappoints; judged against the League of Nations, and against a body with no army or revenue of its own, it is remarkable. I agree, with one refinement: the limitations and the achievements sit in different pillars.
Limitations in functioning
- Paralysed collective security. No Article 43 agreement was ever concluded, and the veto blocks action wherever a permanent member is engaged: Hungary 1956, Iraq 2003, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, and Hormuz shipping in April 2026.
- Peacekeeping disasters in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995).
- An unrepresentative Council, unchanged in size since 1965, with no permanent seat for Africa, Latin America or India.
- Financial fragility. Under heavy US arrears, the 2026 regular budget was cut 7.3% to US$3.45 billion and about 2,900 posts were abolished.
Distinguished and unique achievements
- Decolonisation. Resolution 1514 (1960) made self-determination a legal norm; membership rose from 51 to 193, and the Trusteeship Council is the only principal organ to have finished its mandate (1994).
- Apartheid. India placed it on the agenda in 1946, and Resolution 418 (1977) imposed the first mandatory arms embargo on a member state.
- A forum that kept the Cold War cold. U Thant offered Washington and Moscow a face-saving channel over Cuba (1962); the Black Sea Grain Initiative (2022–23) moved some 33 million tonnes of grain between belligerents.
- Peacekeeping succeeded in Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador and Timor-Leste; India has sent nearly 300,000 personnel to it.
- Norms and law: the Universal Declaration (1948), whose Article 1 says “all human beings” at the insistence of India’s Hansa Mehta; nine core human rights treaties; UNCLOS; the Paris Agreement; the WHO Pandemic Agreement (May 2025); and the BBNJ Agreement, in force since January 2026.
- Development and relief: smallpox eradicated (1980), the MDG and SDG frameworks, and UNHCR’s work for 117.8 million forcibly displaced people (end-2025).
These are unique because only a universal body can turn a principle into a global norm. Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij and Thomas G. Weiss (UN Ideas That Changed the World, 2009) argue that such ideas may be the organisation’s most important legacy.
Weighing the record
Realists such as John J. Mearsheimer treat institutions as mirrors of power, which explains the Council. Robert O. Keohane‘s liberal institutionalism explains the rest: regimes cut transaction costs and survive great-power quarrels. The record is therefore bimodal rather than mediocre. Climate change, pandemics and ozone depletion need a universal forum, and the ICJ’s unanimous climate advisory opinion (July 2025) shows the system still making law amid crisis.
Conclusion
Yes. The UN has failed at what it was chiefly designed for and succeeded at much it was never designed to do, and the second list is longer and more durable. The limitations call for repair through representation and stable funding, India’s case for reformed multilateralism, not for abandonment.