It may have escaped your notice, but yesterday was United Nations Day, commemorating its establishment on October 24 1945. But don’t worry. Chances are the celebrations will have been decidedly muted given the dire state of the world and the UN’s lack of muscle to avert what could become a global calamity.

Since the terrible genocides and civil wars in El Salvador, Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the UN Security Council has been notable for being ignored, its peacekeeping forces for being ineffectual and its conferences for being expensive talking shops.

But it would be wrong to judge the UN solely by its recent, high-profile failures, most notably the UN resolutions that have continually been flouted by Iraq and Israel. Set up in the aftermath of the second world war, as its predecessor, the League of Nations, had been after the Great War, the UN has aimed to help stabilise relations between countries and provide a basis for peace. And it has achieved some important successes in its 57 years.

As a negotiator, it is credited with brokering 172 settlements of regional conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq war, the civil war in El Salvador and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. At the moment, there are 15 peace-keeping forces in operation. It has also enabled free elections to take place in, among other countries, South Africa, Kosovo, Mozambique, East Timor, Nicaragua and El Salvador. And it has played a major role in putting environmental protection on the global agenda. The 1994 UN Earth Summit in Rio on environment and development resulted in international treaties on biodiversity and climate change.

Humanitarian assistance has been another dimension of the UN’s work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has provided food, shelter, medical aid, education and assistance to more than 30 million refugees fleeing war, famine or persecution since the middle of the 20th century.

The World Health Organisation, run by the UN, was responsible for eradicating smallpox in 1980 and has rid the western hemisphere of polio.

Meanwhile, the combined forces of the WHO and Unicef have been pressing for universal immunisation for the major childhood killers (polio, tetanus, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and tuberculosis) which, combined, kill more than eight million children a year. There was only a 5 per cent immunisation rate in developing countries 30 years ago: today 80 per cent are immunised.

There are numerous other ways in which the UN has reduced conflict, improved the world’s health and the environment and helped the victims of natural and man-made disasters. Think about clearing land mines from Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador and Somalia, among other countries, or enshrining children’s rights around the world in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, or improving literacy rates through its agencies.

So while rogue states flout the Security Council and international peacekeeping forces, there are less dramatic but no less significant activities where the UN keeps the world ticking over.

www.un.orgaboutun