Barbara Woodward explains why the UN remains vital to the UK’s foreign policy
Eighty years on from that inaugural meeting, that same spirit is as necessary today as it was in 1946. The organisation that settled on the banks of Manhattan’s East River, however, is less able to deal with the sheer range of challenges it faces today. Pervasive conflict, accumulating humanitarian crises, growing human rights abuses and technological threats abound, compounded by growing aggression from certain member states that feel they can act with impunity.
These are not abstract challenges: each of them has direct consequences for the UK, whether as drivers of migration, chokers of economic growth or threats to our security. As such, to deal with them only when they reach our shores is to set us up for failure. Nor is the UN’s business any longer the exclusive prerogative of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) or Ministry of Defence (MOD); the challenges above are cross-Whitehall challenges and will require the combined expertise and experience of Whitehall to address them.
The UK at the UN: Mutual benefits
Since 1946, the UK has played a decisive role in shaping the UN from within: Under-Secretary-General Sir Brian Urquhart, for example, created the concept of UN Peacekeeping, the ‘Blue Helmets’ for which the organisation is perhaps best-known today. Such creative engagement has proved mutually beneficial for both parties across the last 80 years, in a number of ways.
First, the UN amplifies UK security policy. We’re among the most proactive of the Permanent Members of the Security Council (UNSC), penholding over a quarter of resolutions. Further, during my tenure, we introduced Council debates (against blustering Russian opposition) on the security implications of Covid, climate change and AI, making sure the Council remained focused on emerging threats.
It’s true that not every Security Council meeting moves things forward, but they can provide a critical public forum to build and exert political pressure to deal with today’s main geopolitical issues. We consistently used our Council seat to keep the spotlight on Russian aggression in Ukraine, and on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and Sudan, and we secured the first ever Security Council Resolution on Myanmar, providing a lifeline of hope against the military junta. In September, the UNSC led successful efforts to reimpose so-called “snapback” sanctions on Iran’s nuclear programme, blocking the regime’s progress towards an atomic weapon.
Chairing the Security Council meeting on the Central African region
Second, the UN remains the global norm-setter. It sets worldwide standards in areas from nuclear non-proliferation and human rights to airline standards and telecommunications, to climate change agreements, world trade and global health. Early on, the UN added the Convention on Human Rights (1948), introduced the “blue beret” peacekeepers (1956), agreed Security Council reform (1965) and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (1970). The 1980s saw landmark adoptions of the UN Convention on Torture (1985) and the Rights of the Child (1989). These are painstaking negotiations, as colleagues and experts across Whitehall know well. We don’t always get everything we want, but the UK is known for its negotiating skills and for finding compromises that enable us to reach strategic goals.
Over the past five years, we secured the protection of Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (2023), the Pact for the Future (2024) – determining a shared vision of the UN – and a UN Ocean Conference Declaration (2025). We need this work to continue with respect to climate change, global health, technology and AI. We also need effective UN-affiliated bodies which enforce these standards, starting with the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, for which the brilliant lawyer Dapo Akande is the UK’s candidate in November 2026’s election.
Third, the UN remains a development powerhouse. In humanitarian crises – such as Gaza or Afghanistan – it is consistently the first on the ground and the last to leave. Last year, its unparalleled infrastructure, supply chains, field personnel and economies of scale helped get aid to 116 million people in the most appalling conditions, with food, water and other essential services. More widely, our contributions to agencies like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) mean more children in school and more women with access to contraception. Working with the UN multiplies the impact of the UK aid budget; this is now more important than ever.
No other organisation plays such a range of roles, all of which were on display during September’s 80th General Assembly in New York. Over the course of that week, UN members overwhelmingly endorsed a two-state solution as the only viable framework for lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East; condemned Russian drones breaching Estonian airspace and Russia’s further aggression in Ukraine; reaffirmed commitment to gender equality; and held preparatory meetings for Brazil’s COP30 and for the 2026 International Migration Review Forum. In short, the UN did what it was designed to do. It convened the world – 193 member states – on the political and security challenges of our times.
A League of Nations moment?
But for all the celebratory language and the breadth and reach of its activities – perhaps even because of them – there was a sense at the General Assembly that a sword of Damocles was hanging over this increasingly overstretched organisation.
Referencing the demise of the UN’s predecessor institution, the UN Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohamed, has said that we may be in “a League of Nations moment.” Her comments reflect the words of former Kenyan Permanent Representative to the UN, Martin Kimani: as Russia’s tanks rolled in to Ukraine on the night of 23rd February 2022, he said “multilateralism lies on its death bed tonight.” Sigrid Kaag, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands who has had several UN roles including in Gaza, said recently that “the UN is at a point of irrelevance.”
My colleagues – fellow and former Permanent Representatives, senior UN officials, and humanitarian experts – agree that the UN has never had it easy. From the outset, it has been underfunded and has struggled to keep pace with changing geopolitics and expectations. Tragic failures in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995) led to criticism akin to that which we see today: of an organisation bloated, paralysed and powerless, challenged by geopolitical change and growing aggression and impunity by some member states, with a mismatch of expectations and resources, and an organisational structure that is not fit for purpose in the 21st century.
In response, last summer UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the UN80 reform project, designed to keep the UN relevant for its member states and true to its charter values. Its success may well define his legacy. The project aims to reduce operating costs and organisational complexity and, crucially, to free up staff to help in conflict zones, refugee camps, hospitals and schools.
If successful, it could result in a UN that is better able to play its essential role as the world’s mediator and peacekeeper; a UN that focuses its humanitarian assistance on those people around the world in the greatest need, working with and through local organisations, as well as delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); that can continue to champion universal human rights and the institutions that uphold them; and that focuses on results and value for money, maximising the use of new technology and prioritising cost-effectiveness.
The majority of states share this vision of a UN that delivers on its Charter commitments and serves as a platform where we can meet to address transnational issues like conflict, climate change, global health, AI and education. Likewise, they agree that it urgently needs reforms to streamline its activity and deliver the above. As it has done throughout the UN’s history, the UK stands ready to work across the membership to turbocharge reform efforts to ensure a stronger, more effective and efficient UN, able to deliver for those who need it most.
Chairing the Security Council meeting on the maintenance of peace and security for Ukraine
Conclusion
During my five-year term as the UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN, I followed over 1200 Security Council meetings and many more sessions in the General Assembly. Sitting at the horseshoe table, listening to endless Russian efforts to distort the reality of their callous, illegal war in Ukraine, it was at times hard not to sympathise with the naysayers, all too willing to predict the UN’s imminent extinction.
In such moments of doubt, there was one place within the UN campus from which I drew particular inspiration and reassurance about the UN’s core mission, purpose and values. In an alcove behind the General Assembly stands a statue of St Agnes, clutching a lamb, that was rescued from the ruins of the Roman Catholic church in Nagasaki in 1945. In its charring and mottling is reflected the awful scourge of war, from which the UN was designed to protect all succeeding generations.
That goal is as necessary today as it was 80 years ago, and remains the lodestar by which the course of this reform must run. Or, as former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöljd put it: “It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” I think that sums up, as well as anything I have heard, both the essential role of the United Nations and the attitude that we should bring to its support.
As the Prime Minister has said, Britain can never be separated from events beyond our shores. A reinvigorated UN, delivering security, development assistance and global standards, can be a bulwark against the rising tide of uncertainty we currently face, multiplying the impact of UK policy around the world. The expertise of both the FCDO’s overseas network and the whole of Whitehall will be key to delivering this reform package.
Barbara Woodward was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. She is now the Deputy National Security Adviser for International Affairs.
