The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, along with several others around the world from Sudan to Myanmar, raged unabated in 2025, yet again highlighting the ineptitude of the UN and its powerful, but polarised, Security Council in addressing global challenges.
As nations continue to grapple with humanitarian emergencies, climate chaos and economic inequality, questions are raised over the relevance of the UN and whether the 80-year-old organisation, founded in 1945, has solutions for the problems of a world in flux in the 21st century.
Against this backdrop, India gave a clarion call for reformed multilateralism. Addressing world leaders from the UN General Assembly podium in September, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stressed that an “objective report card” will show that the UN is in a state of crisis.
“When peace is under threat from conflicts, when development is derailed by lack of resources, when human rights are violated by terrorism, the UN remains gridlocked. As its ability to forge common ground diminishes, belief in multilateralism also recedes,” he said.
India categorically told the world that central to the erosion of the UN’s credibility has been resistance to reform, and Delhi stands ready to assume greater responsibilities in an expanded UNSC, which, with its current 15 members, is not representative of the world of 2025.
“Both permanent and non-permanent membership of the Council must be expanded. A reformed Council must be truly representative. And India stands ready to assume greater responsibilities,” Jaishankar said.”The ninth decade of the UN must be one of leadership and hope. Bharat will do its fair share, and more,” he said.
In the fight against terrorism, India continued to lead from the front in combating the scourge.
India exercised its right to defend its people against terrorism through Operation Sindoor that targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack in April perpetrated by The Resistance Front.
At a time when Pakistan was sitting in the UNSC as a non-permanent member, the organisation issued a statement condemning in the strongest terms the Pahalgam attack, and underlined the need to hold its perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors accountable and bring them to justice.
The Resistance Front, a proxy of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group, also found mention for the first time in a Security Council report for its role in the Pahalgam attack.
The calls for reforming the UN also came from the highest echelons of the world body when Secretary General Antonio Guterres gave a clarion call to reform the Security Council to make it more representative, transparent, and effective.
As the UN was grappling with its myriad challenges, its 80th year coincided with one of its most harshest critics returning to power in the White House for a second term.
Relations between the UN and Trump 1.0 were far from cordial and were characterised by severe criticism by the US President of the UN’s effectiveness, with the American leader describing the world body as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time”.
After Trump commenced his second presidency in January 2025, UN watchers and envoys braced for a chilly and less than cordial relationship between 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Turtle Bay.
Within hours of his swearing-in in January, Trump signed an executive order directing the US to withdraw, again, from the Paris climate agreement, echoing a similar directive from his first term.
Within weeks of his second term, Trump issued an order directing that the US will not participate in the UN Human Rights Council, will conduct a review of its membership in UNESCO and suspend funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
And when Trump arrived at the UN Headquarters for the 80th General Assembly session in September, he did not hold back and delivered one of his harshest rebukes of the world body.
“What is the purpose of the United Nations? The UN has such tremendous potential… but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential… all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words and empty words don’t solve war,” Trump said in his speech.
Criticising the UN over migration, Trump said, “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should… it’s actually creating new problems for us to solve. The best example is… the crisis of uncontrolled migration… The United Nations is funding an assault on Western countries and their borders.”
Trump noted that in 2024, the UN budgeted USD 372 million in cash assistance to support an estimated 624,000 migrants journeying into the US.
Trump also slammed the UN for its “predictions” about climate change, describing it as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.
Though the US remains the largest donor to the UN in 2025, it clawed back over USD 1 billion in funding to the world body.
Guterres, in December, said the UN ended 2024 with USD 760 million in unpaid assessments, most of it still outstanding, and has yet to receive USD 877 million in contributions due for 2025, bringing total arrears to around USD 1.586 billion.
In a sign of the times, the UN said it will no longer provide paper towels in UNHQ main campus restrooms servicing office spaces and encouraged use of electric hand-dryers. The move is expected to save over USD 100,000 per year.
India voiced support for sustainable and predictable financing of the UN system, emphasising that resources should be used effectively and efficiently.
Underlining that both global peace and prosperity are endangered today, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Parvathaneni Harish, said that in the real world, nothing can run forever without reform and repair.
