Renewing the missing spirit of multilateralism

Multilateralism is not easy, but it is indispensable for meeting the world’s greatest challenges.

- Stefan Priesner

When a problem is global in its origins and global in its consequences, the coherent response must be global in its architecture. The climate crisis does not pause at a border checkpoint. A pathogen does not require a visa. A fragment of space debris orbits without a passport. Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes labour markets from Lagos to Lucknow simultaneously. These challenges cannot be governed by a single State, or even by a coalition of powerful States acting outside a universal framework. Such a universal framework, first institutionalised in San Francisco in 1945, remains the founding and enduring insight of the United Nations (UN).

The UN marked its 80th anniversary last year under the theme “Building Our Future Together”. And the evidence of what the system delivered is unambiguous.