What if the United Nations was disbanded next Friday?

Eighty years after its founding, the United Nations has become a global fixture, shaping international law, diplomacy, and aid. Yet, it faces mounting criticism—from failing to prevent atrocities in Rwanda and Darfur to being sidelined in the war on Gaza. With its legitimacy contested, a pressing question emerges: Is the UN still necessary?

Al Jazeera asked experts what would happen if the world decided to disband its core institution next week.

What would happen to refugees and migrants?

“If you disbanded the UN on a Friday, you would be looking for a way to reinvent it by Monday,” one expert noted. “So many of today’s challenges are transnational.”

Consider the more than 100 million refugees and displaced people globally—a crisis no single state can solve. UN-supported camps already face aid cuts, driving up malnutrition and social tensions. Without the UN, these systems would collapse.

“Some refugees would move towards the Global North, impacting Europe within a year. Others would be trapped in increasingly precarious situations,” the expert explained. Standards for refugee treatment would plummet, and unilateral models—like the U.S. approach or private aid initiatives—would fill the void, often with deadly consequences.

What would happen to international law?

The influence of international law has been waning for years. Disbanding the UN would accelerate a return to a world of sealed borders and pure Westphalian politics, where state sovereignty is absolute.

However, international law wouldn’t vanish. NGOs and national courts could still pursue accountability. For example, the Palestinian organization Al-Haq is challenging British companies for supplying the Israeli military, and the ICC has investigated crimes against the Rohingya.

“The international courts would probably survive, and laws against genocide remain,” an expert said. “But enforcement would increasingly fall on states, corporations, and civil society—an unexpected burden, but one someone has to bear.”

Could individual states take over peacekeeping?

“Unilateral peacekeeping is not really peacekeeping—it is occupation,” an expert stated. The UN’s primary role is to provide legitimacy. While groups like the G20 have the resources, their interventions are often seen as powerful nations imposing their will on poorer ones.

The UN’s legitimacy is already strained by its inability to enforce measures against the Security Council’s permanent members. “Any law that cannot be enforced is a legal fiction, and that erodes everything,” the expert added. “We have leaders like Putin and Netanyahu traveling the world without any apparent threat.”

A modern redesign of the UN would look radically different from the 1945 model. But without it, a crucial layer of global legitimacy is lost.

What would happen to global health?

“If we disbanded the WHO on Friday, the world would scramble to recreate it almost immediately,” a health expert argued. Its strength is its structure: every member state has an equal vote.

Low-income countries would suffer most, as many rely on the WHO to approve medicines and vaccines. Without it, people would face unsafe treatments or go without—and people would die.

We would also lose vital pandemic preparedness. The WHO’s surveillance systems track major viruses like H5N1, providing early warnings for outbreaks. Its role in promoting vaccine equity and setting global health standards is irreplaceable.

“The WHO is far from perfect, but the world cannot function safely without it.”

Who would manage aid?

The UN and large agencies like USAID have the reach and funding to change millions of lives. While smaller NGOs make a difference, they lack the scale for global programs.

However, these large institutions often reinforce a colonial-era narrative: “We are developed, you are not; to progress, you must become like us.”

If the UN vanished, we would scramble to fill the void with smaller, local organizations. This could make aid more diverse and grounded, but also more fragmented and fragile. The real challenge would be building something genuinely different.

How would international diplomacy work?

“If the UN were abolished, many of the illusions of shared international norms would collapse,” an expert on diplomacy said. Engagement would become openly transactional, shifting to bilateral and regional deals.

While this reality often underpins diplomacy today, the UN’s framework provides a reference point for international law and moral pressure. Without it, that limited leverage would vanish, and vulnerable populations would bear the brunt.

Regional blocs like the EU or AU would try to fill the void, but none could replicate the UN’s global scope.

What would happen to climate goals?

The UN is the only forum for a unified global voice on climate change, hosting critical agreements like the Paris Accord and managing the Green Climate Fund.

“The UN embodies the principles of justice and equity in managing the climate crises,” an expert explained. It ensures smaller, developing countries get the resources needed for a green transition.

Without it, developed countries would be unlikely to step up. “The climate crisis would be overtaken by market and neoliberal forces, with talk of ‘mitigation’ prominent among richer countries and no help on offer to the poorer ones.”

What else would the world miss?

The UN is much more than its political bodies. It includes technical agencies managing everything from telecommunications to intellectual property—the essential wiring of our interconnected world.

An expert compared them to “the wi-fi of multilateralism: You don’t think about their existence most of the time because they work OK, but if they went down, you would miss them a lot.” Without them, routine international interactions would grind to a halt.