The United Nations is a useless organization in that it does not live up to its mission statements.

I chose Syria as a current example of a current event relating to the original statement posted above, but perhaps strayed a little bit too far. While still on this topic for the moment I just want to say that I'm wasn't referring to a full scale attack on Syria to "free" its people was the only option. They need help, and as you said chemical weapons although the death toll rather small still in Syria compared to the overall casualties, pose a bigger global threat. The easiest simple action could possible to send a small team to end the regime, 'Bin Laden style'. Syria is taking advantage of its ally, Russia as being one of the more influential countries within the U.N. and thus the al-Assad regime is demanding more and more. This is corruption at its greatest. Russia is now getting most of the U.N. to support his regime through its own power. A leader that has committed such acts should not just be given a 'slap on the wrist' as Russia is promoting. I want to return to the subject of why chemical weapons make such a big splash in the international community. Yes it is true that they do in fact pose a much, much bigger threat than conventional weapons. But the United Nations as a whole is supposed to help those in need. It is the obligation of the strong to assist the weak, and the United Nations has all the strength needed. I want to point out just a couple of catastrophic failures, resulting in millions of innocent civilian deaths. Below are ten failures of the UN since its inception. At the creation of the UN in 1945, the United States was the only nation in the world to own and test nuclear weapons. In 1970, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed by 190 nations, including five nations that admitted to owning nuclear weapons: France, England, Russia, China, and the US. Despite this treaty, nuclear stockpiles remain high, and numerous nations continue to develop these devastating weapons, including North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, and India. The failure of the non-proliferation treaty details the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, and their inability to enforce crucial rules and regulations on offending nations. Another example, not relating to warfare at all and really for human rights is Sex Abuse.. Many nations plead for support from the United Nations in times of desperation and war. To the oppressed, the blue helmets of UN peacekeepers represent stability and safety. Unfortunately, this was not the case in numerous countries in the 1990s. Reports from Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, and Mozambique revealed a shocking trend; areas with peacekeeping forces saw a rapid rise in child prostitution. Often, soldiers would reward the children with candy or small sums of money, so they could claim the sexual relationship was prostitution rather than rape. Senior officials in the United Nations refused to condemn the peacekeepers, as they feared this public shaming would discourage nations from joining peacekeeping forces. A third reason a I consider the United Nations useless would have to be the Cold War. The Cold War exemplifies the failure behind the United Nations Charter. With the atrocities of World War II still fresh in their minds, the original founders aimed to foster human rights for all citizens of the world. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was established, which was binding to all nations, along with the Convention Against Genocide. Almost immediately, the USSR disregarded these. Civic rights were virtually non-existent. Stalin continued to rule with an iron fist, silencing all opponents. In numerous Soviet Bloc nations, uprisings demanding the rights established in the UDHR were crushed with force. With the United Nations unwilling to act upon such atrocities, the words in the charter were rendered meaningless for those who needed them the most. This is true sign of the influential power and the possibility of threat that certain nations within the United Nations. One of the biggest jokes of the UN is the vetoing that takes place. The United Nations Security Council consists of fifteen nations, five of which are permanent: France, Russia, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The other ten nations are elected to serve two-year terms. The five permanent members enjoy the luxury of veto power; when a permanent member vetoes a vote, the Council resolution cannot be adopted, regardless of international support. Even if the other fourteen nations vote yes, a single veto will beat this overwhelming show of support. The most recent use of the veto was by China and Russia, on July 19th, 2012. The Security Council attempted to evoke chapter VII sanctions from the United Nations Charter to intervene and prevent genocide in Syria. But the vetoes by China and Russia halted any international intervention. Since the Syrian Civil War began. Another sign for their underlining agenda. In addition to these examples lets not forget Darfur where the Koffi Annan decided the UN should let the African Union to intervene. This resulted in 300,000 civilian deaths in 7 years. Sri Lanka failed to receive any sort of help in its 36 year long civil war (1983-2009). Independent experts urged the Human Rights Council of the UN to investigate claims of war crimes, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon acknowledged being "appalled" by the situation, but the United Nations made no attempts to intervene. I want to underline Rwanda because the total casualties. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 details the gross inability of the United Nations to carry out its sworn duty to maintain peace and security. Following the Rwandan Civil War in the early 1990s, tensions between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsis, were at a dangerous high. In 1993, UN peacekeeping forces entered the nation, attempted to secure the capital and enable humanitarian aid. The peacekeeping forces were not authorized to use military maneuvers to achieve these goals.In January of 1994, a cable was sent from the Canadian Force Commander to the UN headquarters detailing the imminent threat of genocide by Hutu mobs on Tutsi minorities. The Security Council never received the cable, and the notice was largely ignored. Following the loss of eighteen American servicemen in the Battle of Mogadishu, the United States was largely unwilling to help in any intervention.Most shocking in this series of events is the abandonment of a school by Belgian peacekeepers after ten soldiers were murdered. Thousands had flocked to the school for UN protection, and roaming gangs of Hutu supporters killed nearly all of them. Close to one million Rwandans were killed in the genocide, amounting to twenty percent of the population. I hope the examples of failures i mentioned, and many more such as Bosnia and the Khmer Rouge are evidence enough of how useless the United Nations really are. It seems as though they only act if they receive 'return on investment'. A truly United Nations would cooperate under any means necessary to diplomatically, or forcefully (with the least amount of repercussion) find ends to problems such as these.