What the Hell Is the United Nations?

Every September, the world’s presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, motorcades and security details descend on Manhattan for the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.

They give speeches. They shake hands. They condemn wars. They call for peace. They accuse one another of hypocrisy. New York traffic becomes a small-scale international incident.

And, every year, plenty of people understandably ask: What exactly is the United Nations supposed to do?

The short answer: The UN is the closest thing the world has to a permanent meeting place for governments. It is not a world government. It does not have a president who can order countries around. It does not have a standing army that can swoop in and stop every war. And it cannot make major powers cooperate when they would rather fight, stall or veto action.

But it is also much more than a building full of diplomats making speeches.

The UN is a sprawling global system involved in peace negotiations, humanitarian aid, refugee assistance, disease response, food relief, election support, international law, climate talks and peacekeeping missions. It was created after World War II, when countries that had just survived the deadliest conflict in human history decided the next war ought to be argued about before it became another catastrophe.

The organization officially began in 1945. Today, it has 193 member countries.

So what does the UN actually do?

At its simplest, the UN gives almost every country on Earth a place to talk, negotiate and vote.

Its General Assembly is the big public-facing gathering: one country, one vote. The United States gets one vote. So does a tiny island nation with fewer people than many American suburbs.

That sounds democratic, but the General Assembly’s resolutions are often political statements rather than legally binding orders. A huge vote may show where world opinion is moving, but it does not automatically force a government to change course.

The Security Council is where the UN can wield more meaningful authority on war and international security. It can authorize sanctions, approve peacekeeping operations and, in some circumstances, authorize the use of force.

There is a catch large enough to drive a diplomatic convoy through: five countries have permanent seats and veto power.

Those five are the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France. If any one of them votes no on a major Security Council measure, it can kill the action.

That arrangement is one reason the UN is often criticized as weak or paralyzed. It can be. But it was also part of the post-World War II bargain. The victorious major powers were unlikely to join an institution where they could be routinely overruled on matters of war and peace.

In other words, the veto is both a major design flaw and part of the reason the club exists at all.

Is it just diplomacy?

No. The UN is really an umbrella over a large collection of agencies, offices and programs.

UNICEF works on children’s health, nutrition, education and emergency aid. The World Food Programme moves food into famine zones and disaster areas. The UN refugee agency assists people forced from their homes. The World Health Organization coordinates international public-health work. Other UN bodies work on aviation, shipping, nuclear safeguards, labor standards, weather forecasting, elections, development and human rights.

This is the part of the UN that tends to receive less attention than the big speeches at headquarters.

When it works, the organization is a giant coordination machine: getting food, vaccines, staff, money, equipment and information to places where local governments may be overwhelmed, broken by war or simply too poor to handle a crisis alone.

That does not make the UN immune to bureaucracy, waste, politics or failure. It does mean the organization’s work is much broader than its annual New York spectacle.

Who pays for it?

The UN does not collect taxes from ordinary people. It relies mainly on its member governments.

Countries pay required assessments for the core UN budget, with wealthier countries generally paying more. They also make voluntary contributions to particular agencies, programs and humanitarian causes.

The United States is the largest financial contributor to the UN system and is assessed 22 percent of the organization’s regular budget. China is also one of the largest contributors. Funding disputes are a recurring feature of UN politics because countries often want influence over how their money is used—and because many governments do not always pay on time.

Peacekeeping has a separate budget. The five permanent Security Council powers pay higher rates because they have an outsized role in deciding when those missions happen.

That leads to a recurring political complaint: The countries with the most power often determine what the UN does, while the countries experiencing war, hunger or displacement live with the consequences.

What are blue helmets?

UN peacekeepers are not a permanent UN military.

They are troops, police officers and civilian workers supplied by member countries for individual missions. The familiar blue helmet or blue beret signals that they are serving under a UN mandate rather than simply as their home country’s soldiers.

Peacekeepers may monitor cease-fires, protect civilians, support elections, help disarm fighters, train police or provide stability after a conflict.

But they have limits. They usually need a Security Council mandate, a workable political agreement and at least some cooperation from the parties on the ground. They cannot reliably force peace on governments or armed groups determined to keep fighting.

That is why people often expect the UN to do something it was never built to do: act as a global cop that can instantly stop wars.

It cannot.

Who is not in the UN?

Nearly every internationally recognized country is a member, but there are exceptions and complications.

The Holy See, which represents the Vatican, and the State of Palestine are non-member observer states. They can participate in much of the organization’s work but do not have the same status as full members.

Taiwan is not a UN member because the government in Beijing holds China’s seat and claims Taiwan as part of China. Kosovo is not a member because its independence remains disputed and it has not won the necessary support in the Security Council. Western Sahara is also disputed.

Joining the UN is political. A would-be member needs approval from the Security Council and then a two-thirds vote in the General Assembly. That means one of the five veto-wielding permanent members can effectively stop a country from getting in.

Why is it in New York?

The UN headquarters sits along the East River in Manhattan, on a 17-acre site donated with money from John D. Rockefeller Jr. The headquarters opened in 1951, and the annual General Assembly session remains one of New York’s biggest diplomatic events.

Despite popular myth, the UN is not a foreign country inside New York. It has special legal protections and privileges, but it is not a sovereign patch of international territory that somehow floated away from the United States.

It is, however, one of the few places where representatives of almost every government on Earth can sit in the same room.

That is the UN’s central purpose—and its central frustration.

It cannot solve the problem of countries refusing to cooperate. It is made up of those countries.

But when the alternative is no shared forum, no aid network, no peacekeeping system and no place to negotiate, even a deeply imperfect United Nations can be better than nothing.