Where the UN is winning

In particular there has been a six-fold increase in UN preventive diplomacy missions (to stop wars starting); a four-fold increase in UN peace operations (both to end ongoing conflicts and reduce the risk of wars restarting); and an 11-fold increase in the number of states subject to UN sanctions (which can help pressure warring parties into peace negotiations).

In all of this, regional intergovernmental organisations have played an increasingly significant part, as have the international financial institutions and individual states. And a very much more central and important role has been played in recent years by NGOs and other civil society actors. My own International Crisis Group, which didn't exist ten years ago, is a case in point. But it is the UN - the only international organisation with a global security mandate - that has been the central player.

So those of us who continue to believe that a rule-based, co-operative international order is the best way to combat the world's new threats to state and human security don't need our heads read.

And, for all the frustrations of working through and around a UN system that still desperately needs major change, those of us who spend our lives trying to prevent and resolve deadly conflict haven't been wasting our time.