The idea of polycrisis has outstayed its usefulness. In one sense, if everything is in urgent, nothing is. In another, we can't focus on solutions if we're stuck endlessly admiring these problems - seductively complex, interconnected, dynamic and shrouded in uncertainty. The UN has played its
Bureaucracies seem perpetually caught between Kafkan-Orwellian nightmare and gridlocked, inefficient paper-pushing. The UN's top-heavy bureaus and departments are derided and ridiculed, often fairly. But when efficiency becomes the dominant story, we risk weakening the very functions that make a complex bureaucracy work: coordination, neutrality, and shared purpose. Not
On June 17, the US pulled out of the FfD4 negotiations on a final outcome agreement, arguing the draft was overly “prescriptive, lengthy, and non‑binding.” Through the drafting process, the U.S. submitted 400+ amendments targeting climate commitments, gender language, fossil fuel subsidy phase‑outs, tax transparency, debt, and
Over the past decade or so, innovation and systems thinking have been embedded around the UN development system. From labs to foresight to systems change, nearly every major agency has adopted frameworks inspired by design thinking, futures analysis, and adaptive delivery. This movement has enabled experimentation, opened doors to new
Another part of the multilateral system that is at breaking point is its financial architecture: the agreements and institutions that keep international financial flows stable. It was already on shaky ground before Trump’s shock therapy and gambling with global recession. Unsustainable debt has been ballooning in developing countries, with
Amid a geopolitical reconfiguration, the international human rights regime faces a reckoning. Instead of doubling down on a legalistic system with diminishing traction and results, the UN can regenerate a more pluralistic, pragmatic international justice out of more human struggles and systems. Resurgent nationalism has denigrated international law as the
The Arctic climate warms four times faster than the global average. Summer sea ice extent has plummeted by roughly 30% over the past 30 years, and up to 90% of the oldest, thickest ice has vanished. This is transforming geopolitical calculations for trade, strategic resources and security. Around 13% of
Beneath the immediate dismantling of aid agencies and slashing of multilateral budgets, the UN is facing deeper, existential questions from a fracturing international system. Messier, overlapping crises, aggressively competitive and confrontational foreign policy and trade, and shifting centres of power and coalitions of interest. Decades of assumptions about the dynamics
At the UN General Assembly in late February, on the anniversary of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. voted against a Europe-led resolution affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity, proposing a watered-down peace resolution without criticism of Russia. This followed JD Vance's dressing down of