Throughout its half-century of existence, the UN has been both highly lauded and highly criticized. It has undoubtedly contributed beneficially to the second half of twentieth-century history, yet many people argue that it has not done enough, and the little that it has done was insufficient. The future course that the UN adopts will have to take into consideration the mistakes and successes of the past, in order to remain viable and make a brighter future.

The first thing that should be taken into consideration is the extent to which the UN can get involved in international matters. Presently, its annual budget is $2.5 billion. This represents a great increase, considering the fact that in 1963, the annual budget was around $ 500 million, and in 1946, it was $ 50 million. $2.5 billion may, at first glance, appear like a lot of money. Yet, when one considers that even a tiny country such as Luxemburg has an annual budget of $5.46 billion, which represents more than twice the UN’s annual budget, one realizes that, for obvious reasons, there is only so much the UN can do. Most people would like to see the United Nations cure the world of all diseases and eradicate poverty and hunger. However, realistically, this will never happen, since such humanitarian action would require a tremendous amount of money, which the member nations are not, and almost certainly never will, be willing to pay.

Another thing which should be taken into account is the fact that the UN’s mandate is limited, since it cannot get involved in country’s domestic affairs. Most of the time, the UN can only inform the world of what is going on, but cannot get directly involved.

Obviously, violations of human rights still occur, which go fundamentally against the policies of the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There still are wars, and countries still argue about issues which should have been resolved fifty years ago. However, this does not mean that the UN has failed to meet its objectives, for it has never promised to make its goals come true; it simply stated that it would try to meet them. The creators of the United Nations may have had good and slightly idealistic ideas, but they were realistic enough to realize that everlasting world peace and respect for human rights was a prospect which would certainly not be realized within their lifetime, and probably not in the near future.

During the Cold War, the UN was a place, during the Cold War, where the Eastern and Western blocs could discuss instead of actively fighting. This is perhaps the UN’s greatest accomplishment. Perhaps we owe our lives to the UN, since the Cold War did not escalate to a World Nuclear War. In the future, the UN will hopefully act as an arena where member nations may argue, but not wage war. The UN has also sent peacekeeping operations, which had varying degrees of success, but at least showed that the UN does have some power over the course of world politics, and that its resolutions do have an impact.

Even though achieving all of its goals is perhaps impossible, the UN could have accomplished a lot more than it has in the past fifty years. It has rightfully received a lot of complaints. The organization was accused of being demagogical, only wishing to appeal to the masses. Such instances were apparent when the UN got involved in conflicts in areas such as Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, which were highly publicized by news agencies around the world. However, the UN did not get involved in conflicts which were not covered quite as extensively by the media, such as in the Islamic republics of the former USSR (notably Chechnya) and in Southern Sudan, even though the conflicts there often were equally violent as those in Rwanda or Bosnia.