Frankly I think that the UN is only as good as the jet setting buerocrats, dictators and dirty dealing symbiotic relationship between them that keep that US subsidised gravy train running. All those billions of dollars could really help a lot of US families who get screwed by welfare systems.
Simply look at what the UN has done for Tsunami relief and then compare it too Australia and America's contributions as well as our charities ~ while we had troops on the ground distributing food and clean water to the worst effected areas with an Aircraft Carrier, C-130's and Helicopters the UN was bickering with hotel staff over round the clock catering in their hotel base of operations. The other big donations from countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany, Netherlands would of course be going through the UN - Australia's 1 billion pledge to Indonesia is a bilateral affair that does not involve the UN one bit, and that is a good thing.
The UN is an utter waste of time, it has never been a viable means to avoid conflct and turned itself into a forum for every dictator and kleptocrat to shift blame away from themselves and onto the USA and Israel. The General Assembly is a joke, the security council doesn't give a fuck about what the UN tells them to do and its "good organisations" still manage to find themselves party to very bad deeds like sweets being given to young Palestinian Arab children to become shahids, virulently anti-semitic school textbooks to the UNRWA's Peter Hansen admitting to having no problem with Hamas members on the UN payroll because their religious practices and involvements are inconcequential to what they do for the UN (incidently it was also under Hansen that UN Ambulances were (ab)used by Palestinian terrorists to run guns and attack Israeli's). From it's singularly unique ability to treat Israel as if it is comitting genocide and Sudan as a respected member of the human rights comittee to the 21 billion dollar UNscan that was oil for food the UN manages to epitomise how things that may seem so right, such as internationalist respect for human rights can go so wrong when entrusted to dictators.
I would love to see "the UN" ~ the impossible ideal that it and the league of nations should be but it is not that and nor can it ever become that in its current iteration.