UN under attack?

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres talks with President Donald Trump during the "Global Call to Action on the World Drug Problem" at the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018, in New York.

United Nations — The year 2019 started off at the United Nations with Somalia brazenly kicking out the UN envoy, followed soon after by Guatemala ditching a UN-sponsored anti-corruption commission.

After a tough year that saw the United States, the UN’s top financial backer, cut funding, pull out of the Human Rights Council and scrap UN-backed agreements, the United Nations is taking more hard hits.

Some UN watchers are questioning whether the global organization created at the end of World War II to safeguard world peace is facing a slow demise, increasingly under attack by governments with nationalist agendas.

Nearing the half-way mark in his five-year tenure, UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned that multilateralism is under fire at a time when the world needs it most.

Leading the anti-UN charge is President Donald Trump whose America First approach to foreign policy has emboldened other governments to thumb their noses at the United Nations, analysts say.