Nepal, Oct. 26 -- United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said, "The UN was not created to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell". When he said this in 1954, the Korean War had divided the world, vetoes paralysed the Security Council, and faith in multilateralism was faltering. Hammarskjold's line was not drenched in defeatism-it was realism rather. But 80 years on, the question returns: Has the UN really saved humanity from hell?

A catalogue of disillusionment

The war in Ukraine has exposed, once again, the UN's limitations. Article 2(4) of the Charter explicitly forbids the use of force by one state against another, yet Russian tanks have been rolling across Ukraine since 2022. And whenever the Security ...