Multilateralism is not easy, but it is indispensable for meeting the world’s greatest challenges. 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. Since 1945, and despite grave challenges to peace, the world has lived through a period without a major great power conflict. It has also been a period of unprecedented development gains. Extreme poverty has fallen from over 36% of the world’s population in 1990 to under........

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