Mark Carney and Alexander Stubb's essay in The Economist argues that the answer to the postwar global order coming apart is small purpose-built coalitions around a shared interest, issue by issue, rather than around one institution everyone belongs to. They call it 'variable geometry', and
On 3 February 2025 the UN committee negotiating a new framework convention on international tax cooperation met in New York for its organizational session. Jonathan Shrier, the acting US representative to the Economic and Social Council, told delegates that the US did not plan to take part any further and
On 4 March 2025, the United States told the General Assembly that it rejected and denounced the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The statement, made during a vote on a resolution about peaceful coexistence, called the Sustainable Development Goals a programme of soft global governance inconsistent with American sovereignty, and
In 2022 the World Health Organization set out to reduce its reliance on earmarked funding that ties projects to donor requirements. Member States agreed to raise their 'assessed contributions' from 16% of core budget towards 50% by 2031, and began carrying it out with a 20% increase for
The inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance meets in Geneva on 6 and 7 July, immediately followed by the seventh AI for Good Global Summit running through to 10 July. More than 50 UN agencies are partners, and the recently appointed Independent International Scientific Panel on AI reports into
The G7 finance ministers met in Paris on 18 and 19 May 2026, consulted Brazil, India, Kenya and South Korea, and annexed to their communique a statement titled the G7 Principles for Mutually Beneficial International Partnerships. Twenty-six of thirty-four OECD DAC members cut official development assistance in 2025.
On 14 May the United States announced an additional $1.8 billion for the UN's humanitarian operations, channeled through the country-based pooled funds that the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs administers. The contribution brings total US support since December to $3.8 billion across 21
On 25 April 2026, fighters from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front struck Bamako, Kidal, Gao, Sevare and Kati simultaneously. Mali's Defence Minister Sadio Camara was killed by a suicide truck bomb at his residence in Kati.
Two months ago, USG Rosemary DiCarlo briefed the Security Council on critical minerals. Trade in raw and semi-processed minerals reached approximately $2.5 trillion in 2023, more than 10% of global trade. Demand could triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2040. More than 70% of global cobalt extraction occurs
The Resident Coordinator system is being 'recalibrated', the third revision in eight years. On 1 April, the DSG briefed Member States on what the latest round will involve:the UN Development Coordination Office reorganised into two divisions, country teams better configured to context, expanded regional surge support, and
The 2025 Financing the UN Development System report, published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and the MPTFO in September, records 81% of 2023 contributions to UN operational activities for development and humanitarian assistance as earmarked. Core funding was 19%. The total earmarked figure for the UN development system in 2022
The case for a well-resourced UN development system has never been principally about redistribution from wealthier industrial economies to poor, struggling ones. The UN's development pillar were premised on the connective tissue of stability: the governance capacity, the public health systems, the coordination functions that make societies
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is reviewed every five years by its 191 member states, with the aim of producing a consensus document on compliance and next steps across the treaty's three pillars: disarmament, non-proliferation, and peaceful nuclear energy. The last three conferences (2005, 2015, 2022) failed
Russia convened the five permanent Security Council members in October to draft the joint letter that formally launches the selection of the next UN Secretary-General. The P5 agreed on a text modelled closely on the 2015 letter and presented it to the ten elected members as something close to
The WTO's 14th Ministerial Conference this week will need to address a growing hole in the organisation's authority and influence, and what's filling that gap. MC14 convenes in Yaoundé five weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down Trump's IEEPA tariffs as
The EU is meeting with Kazakhstan for a human rights dialogue. The agenda includes sustained pressure on civil society, a new constitution rushed through a one-month drafting process with minimal civic input, and new rules increasing state oversight of foreign-funded organisations. The same week, the Asian Development Bank&
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 part
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
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