The United Nations is on its knees, but still breathing and still liberal

From Gaza to Trump, the challenges mount. But ahead of its general assembly this week, the organisation remains the last hope for many people across the world

- Giles Whittell and Katie McQue

The porterhouse steak at Smith & Wollensky's, a few blocks from UN Plaza, costs $155 for two. "It's one of our popular items," the maître d' says, "especially this week."

This week is UNGA week, when the world descends on New York for the United Nations general assembly and a thousand quiet bilaterals in the restaurants of midtown Manhattan.

The options for UN aid recipients aren't so tempting. The amount of food distributed by the World Food Programme nearly halved between 2020 and 2024. Funding for all UN aid programmes is falling as rich nations cut their budgets. In war zones on three continents the UN is failing in its historic role as peacekeeper. In Washington, which approved a third of all UN spending in 2022, support for the UN generally has collapsed.

Eighty years after its founding in San Francisco on a wave of optimism, the UN is unloved, unhappy and shrinking. Its accountants have been told to find $500m of savings in New York alone. Nearly 20% of jobs there are to go. The UN's host nation under President Trump has mounted a full-scale assault on its institutions, says one former senior official. Its secretary general has been a "damp squib", says another.

Across the plaza from the 39-storey UN building stands the Trump World Tower. It would surprise no one if Trump's anti-UN animus was fuelled by a desire to knock the older building down for better views of the East River, but the reality is knottier. The UN is reeling from a combination of donor fatigue, structural defects, brutal geopolitics and a deep conviction in Maga-world that the body set up to end war as a way of settling arguments is now disabled by bureaucracy and shot through with antisemitism.