Despite all its failures, inconsistencies and difficulties, check the below list of successes of the UN:
- The first and foremost is that it has prevented the occurrence of any further world wars. Instrumental in the maintenance of international balance of power.
- It played a significant role in disarming the world and making it nuclear free (well, almost). Various treaty negotiations like ‘Partial Test Ban Treaty’ and ‘Nuclear non-proliferation treaty’ have been signed under UN.
- Demise of colonialism and imperialism on one hand and apartheid on the other had UN sanctions behind them.
- The UN acted as vanguard for the protection of human rights of the people of the world, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
- UN agencies and affiliates such as WHO, UNICEF, and UNESCO have keenly participated in the transformation of the international social sector.
- Limited but moderately successful peace-brokering arrangements and peace-keeping operations in a number of conflict zones (since 1945, the UN has been credited with negotiating 172 peaceful settlements that have ended regional conflicts).
- The world body was also instrumental in institutionalization of international laws and world legal framework.
- Passage of various conventions and declarations on child, women, climate, etc, highlights the extra-political affairs of the otherwise political world body.
- UN interventions in a number of peace missions in Africa have done reasonably well to control the situation.