The world is once again experiencing profound fragility. Great-power rivalry is intensifying. The rules-based multilateral order is being deliberately weakened. And slowly, dangerously, we are witnessing the return of an ancient maxim: That might is right. A maxim that undermines the very foundation of the UN charter.
For 80 years the UN Charter, strengthened by International Law and regional frameworks has steered the world towards peace1, stability, and development. That clarity of purpose, based on fundamental human rights, a common human destiny built on commitment to international norms, cooperation, and intentional restraint amongst states-big and small has gradually blurred over the last 15 years. The world is increasingly rudderless in the middle of approaching storms. The General Assembly and the Security Council must choose wisely as the world gathers in New York to restore trust, manage multilateral transformation, and prepare to elect the next Secretary General of the UN who will be crucial to deftly safeguard the multilateral order.
The systematic hollowing of the UN from within by some of its foundational members through financial precarity evident in severe liquidity crunch, targeted pressure on mandate holders and members of its core agencies undermines decades of work to preserve world peace, foster cooperation, rein in impunity from states, and non-state actors across the world. A situation that is gradually eroding international consensus on safeguarding human dignity and fundamental human rights. It is hampering global duty to address core issues such as the dire need to strengthen the climate change regime, migration crisis, resolve intractable wars and conflicts, build a global framework to regulate AI, and deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals.
States must reaffirm their commitment to the multilateral framework under the UN Charter. The United Nations is a creation of states with a mandate to ensure that sovereignty and power is exercised within a common framework that preserves international peace and stability.
If there is an indelible success of the UN over the past 80years, it is its tenuous preservation of global peace, sustained efforts in development and poverty eradication as well as fostering dialogue among states. Above all, its humanitarian and human rights instruments and mechanisms for the first time in human history has embedded a universal consciousness, the inviolable principle that human dignity is universal and does not diminish across international borders! In short, one of the UN's greatest achievements is the creation of a global architecture of fundamental human rights around a simple proposition: Human dignity does not stop at an international border.
The Great Powers, middle powers, and emerging powers must once again rethink their sovereign interests within the grand bargain of compromise that is at the core of the multilateral framework. Every state irrespective of its power or the perception of its power is integral to preservation of peace, security, development and protection of human rights. The business community and civil society, need to realign and reaffirm their crucial role as hubs of local, national, regional and international frameworks where policy is measured by implementation and accountability.
The UN as a global body is not blameless in its current precarity, entrenched anxiety, and search for relevance. Decades of confounding bureaucracy, internal inertia to change, perception of elitism, fiscal straitjacket by states through Kafkaesque financial rule of reimbursing funds never received. These have fuelled the perception of elitism and the narrative of distance from the very vulnerable populations it is supposed to serve. This has created a degree of institutional disengagement that requires strategic self-reflection and a deliberate willingness to adapt to a rapidly changing world. There is the need to improve equitable access in its workforce from merit, potentials, and experience to reinforce its institutional memory and credibility rather than a perceived structural preference for a narrow circle of elite institutions. The current restructuring under UN80 Initiative is, therefore, a gigantic step in the right direction. It is a commonsense reaffirmation of the cut your coat according to your cloth.
Faced with the evolving phenomenon of uncertainty, precarity, and anxiety that is painfully becoming a daily reality of a good percentage of absolutely dedicated, versatile and hardworking UN officers. A colleague once asked me as she contemplates taking a job with the European Union: “Is it worth it? Does the work we do in the UN still matters?” The answer could not be starker. It matters! And you matter! The work you do is critical and essential for world stability. States must wake up to the reality that the alternative is a less safe world in which power increasingly substitutes for rules, sovereignty becomes less constrained by international norms, and human dignity becomes contingent upon borders and geopolitical influence. A regression to pre-1945 would be a moral failure of seismic proportion.
The United Nations is not an abstract institution belonging to diplomats in gilded buildings in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi or Bangkok. It belongs to all of us. Its legitimacy ultimately rests not in its buildings, but in the people it serves around the world and the principles it protects for the good of all. In this sense, the United Nations embodies the African philosophy of Ubuntu: I am because you are. Our shared humanity is precisely why multilateralism matters. The United Nations is YOU.
Alando Chia, Fmr. Senior United Nations Fellow on People of African Descent.
