The UN's existential crisis: could lethal virus destroy the very idea of our common humanity?

As it prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary, the UN has every reason to worry about its continuing salience 

US President Donald Trump remotely addressing the 75th session of the UN General Assembly last month. His recent announcement that he intends to withdraw the US from the World Health Organisation may be a harbinger of a broader unravelling of the multilateral system painstakingly constructed after the Second World War. Picture: PA

On October 24, the United Nations will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding in 1945, when the historic UN Charter entered into force. Sadly, the organisation will do so at a time when multilateralism has never seemed more in peril.

The Covd-19 pandemic has inaugurated a new era of deglobalisation. Evidence of isolationism and protectionism is mounting, with many governments loudly emphasising sovereignty, nationalism, and self-reliance, and questioning treaties and trade agreements. The UN, therefore, has every reason to worry about its continuing salience.