The UN is not meant to be a world government. It’s meant to be a forum that allows all countries to maintain a bare minimum of diplomatic relations. The overarching goal is to prevent nuclear war and prevent WWIII.

It’s predecessor, the League of Nations, was meant to prevent WWII and had some teeth to help enforce their decisions. The result was that it collapsed quickly and did very little to prevent another global conflict.

Yeah, reading the article, it sounds like they’ve decided to park at the space station because the parts that malfunctioned during the journey to the space station were not designed to survive re-entry, meaning that they won’t have the opportunity to understand what went wrong with them after they return to Earth. So they’re delaying the departure in order to collect as much information as possible about what went wrong in the first part of the mission. They’re still confident that a safe return is going to happen.