Geneva.

On 1 September 2025, in Tianjin, China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) concluded its 25th summit, with the participation of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, numerous chiefs of international organizations, ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn, Commonwealth of Independent States General Secretary Sergey Lebedev, and the Presidents or Prime Ministers of 24 States including Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey.

The highlight of the summit was the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) outlined by Chinese President Xi Jinping, in reaffirmation of the aspirations of the “Global Majority” for an inclusive and balanced world order based on the continued validity of the UN Charter. President Xi Jinping’s five principles for a just and equitable global governance are aimed at guaranteeing a security architecture for all, a multilateral framework to promote world peace and prosperity for future generations. In brief, “ First, we should adhere to sovereign equality. Second, we should abide by international rule of law. Third, we should practice multilateralism. Fourth, we should advocate the people-cantered approach. Fifth, we should focus on taking real actions.”

If nothing else, this summit proved that the unipolar world championed by the United States, the neo-colonial habits of the Europeans, the mindset associated with Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”, have no future. A reality check confirms that we have moved into a multipolar scenario where global issues will have to be addressed multilaterally.

80 Years United Nations

The international community in the year 2025, eighty years after the adoption of the UN Charter, is facing dauting challenges in global governance. The erosion of the authority of the United Nations, its failure to prevent wars, to stop the genocide in Gaza, to effectively manage the challenges of climate change, manifest the need to enhance the UN’s enforcement powers. Not only the UN itself, but other UN agencies and associated organizations including the World Trade Organization suffer from a lack of enforcements mechanisms. Because the world of 2025 is not the world of 1945, it is evident that the United Nations and its agencies must become more representative of today’s world and that the developing countries, what we may call the “Global Majority” must have a decisive voice in global governance. The UN and in particular the UN Security Council must be reformed to ensure the equitable representation of all States members.

Global governance requires uniform rules, not “international law à la carte”, requires a rules based order — already laid down in the UN Charter, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the Geneva Red Cross Conventions, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and hundreds of other conventions, protocols and declarations. The United Nations has made a superlative job of standard-setting, has established monitoring mechanisms, expert committees, Special Procedures, and international judicial instances. Alas,........

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