If you check your calendar, you’ll see today is United Nations Day, a day we’re urged (by the U.N. itself) to do more.

“More to protect those caught up in armed conflict, to fight climate change and avert nuclear catastrophe; more to expand opportunities for women and girls, and to combat injustice and impunity; more to meet the Millennium Development Goals,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.

High-sounding words are not uncommon from the agency, but has the U.N. earned its self-congratulatory Day?

Ki-moon certainly thinks so.

“The founding of the U.N. was a solemn pledge to the world’s people to end such assaults on human dignity, and lead the way to a better future,” he said.

“There have been painful setbacks, and there is much work ahead to realize the charter’s vision. But we can take heart from our achievements.

“The U.N. Millennium Development Goals have inspired the most successful anti-poverty campaign ever.

“U.N. treaties addressing inequality, torture and racism have protected people, while other agreements have safeguarded the environment.

“U.N. peacekeepers have separated hostile forces, our mediators have settled disputes and our humanitarian workers have delivered lifesaving aid.”

It’s hard to take such claims seriously, when we see daily images of war, torture and poverty. The U.N.’s achievements cited by Ki-moon are far fewer than its failures.

“The U.N.’s failures, from its inability to stop ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan to widespread abuses by U.N. peacekeepers across Africa, are legion,” historian Nile Gardiner said.

“Inaction, incompetence, and even abject inhumanity have all too often been the hallmarks of U.N. operations, which have frequently demonstrated a callous indifference to human suffering.”

Member nations have all too often used the body as cover for their own crimes.

That’s why the U.N. Human Rights Council (which includes serial human rights abusers such as Pakistan and Venezuela) condemned Israel for the conflict in Gaza last year, but failed to even mention Hamas, which instigated the brief war.

Expect similar condemnations soon, in light of current unrest.

“Instead of focusing on actual human rights violators around the world, as this international body was created to do, the UNHRC keeps its main focus on Israel – a nation that has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect and preserve the lives of civilians, both during this latest conflict and throughout previous defensive responses to Hamas terror,” wrote Israeli Ambassador Ido Aharoni in Time magazine.

Corruption is also a U.N. hallmark. According to an Associated Press report in 2010, the U.N. has cut back sharply on investigations into corruption and fraud within its ranks, shelving cases involving the possible theft or misuse of millions of dollars.

That’s one way to deal with corruption.

More broadly, the U.N. has simply become irrelevant.

“U.N. Day is a public relations effort to conjure broader popular recognition and respect for the world body, which sadly it has not garnered through its own actions,” the Heritage Foundation’s Brett Schaefer pointed out.

So this year, let’s skip the festivities.