Opinion | Imperfect UN needs major reform amid legitimacy crisis, Global South can play a role
- The absence of several top P5 leaders at the recent UN meeting shows multilateralism is at a crisis point
- The UN has to reaffirm the legitimacy of multilateralism and involve more members in decision-making including the Global South
The planet is on fire, but almost all the firefighters have deserted. At the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, which began on September 19 in New York, the leaders of four of the five permanent members of the Security Council – the UN’s most powerful executive body – were absent.
The absence of the top representatives of France, Britain, Russia and China, replaced by ministers or diplomats, showed the emptying of the main global multilateral forum and highlighted the speeches of the two presidents who opened the General Assembly: Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the United States’ Joe Biden.
Both leaders referred bluntly to fires that are ravaging the planet – the climate emergency and the war in Ukraine. And they pointed the finger at the central issue, which the absentees made clear: the crisis of the UN and the multilateral system that has been built around it in recent decades.
The UN was created in 1945, on the initiative of the US and with the support of its allied countries that had defeated Nazism and fascism (primarily the Soviet Union, Britain and France) with the aim of “preserving future generations from the scourge of war”.
A year earlier, in 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreements had laid the foundations for the post-war global financial system, and created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Over the years, dozens of agencies, funds and specialised programmes have been added, gradually building up what is known as the UN System.
Practically every country in the world is a member of the UN and the organisation deals with countless issues, ranging from protection of marine life, humanitarian aid operations, climate change to online disinformation.
