Most countries need the UN more than ever—just not this UN

STATES ARE pulling against the ties that hold the world together. Trade volume is at an all-time high, yet protectionism has hit levels unseen in a generation. Conflicts claim nearly a quarter of a million lives a year—double the toll of a decade ago—and are increasingly connected through the very systems that drive global prosperity. Interdependence itself, a defining achievement of the post-war order, has become its most contested terrain.

A United Nations logo on a security entrance door to the United Nations compound at the start of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, at U.N. headquarters. (AP)Consider the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict there is reaching countries far beyond the range of any missile, through the cost of energy and fertilisers, and thus food prices and bond yields. Tools of co-operation—payment networks, maritime transport, supply-chain nodes—have become instruments of contest.

Technology heralds further strife. Data sovereignty is becoming as great a source of tension as territorial sovereignty. The possibilities that artificial intelligence opens are so vast that the chips needed to develop it, the energy needed to sustain it and the infrastructure through which it reaches users have become central to great-power rivalry. Most people are watching this competition from afar, uncertain whether they will share in the wealth frontier technologies create or in managing the risks they bring.

Countries are responding to these pressures with new regional trade agreements, ad hoc coalitions, industrial strategies and alternative logistics routes. And the more interdependence is used as leverage, the faster alternatives emerge. Renewing co-operation will require addressing the grievances that fuel fragmentation—not least those felt by globalisation’s discontents—and repairing the frameworks it has damaged.

Where does this leave the United Nations? Too often, outside the room. Its absence from the diplomacy that matters has sapped trust. Disagreement in the Security Council, and within the wider membership, limits the UN’s room for manoeuvre, but cannot account for everything.

The organisation must acknowledge its own shortcomings. In seeking the office of secretary-general, I have listened to people who need the UN but increasingly doubt it can act. They want leadership willing to take risks for peace. They see a UN waiting for the world to come to New York, distant from their lives, convening meetings that few notice and producing reports that few read: of the roughly 1,100 published in 2024, nearly two-thirds were downloaded fewer than 2,000 times. They hear calls for ceasefires but few concrete proposals on how to secure them.

Not every criticism is fair. But a crisis of trust cannot be answered by assuming the critics are wrong. As wars multiply and their consequences spread, the UN’s legitimacy increasingly rests on its ability to meet its peacemaking mandate. Time is not on our side.

My experience in the Black Sea Initiative taught me what is possible when things are done differently. In 2022 the war in Ukraine froze grain exports and food prices surged. The Istanbul agreements between Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the UN reopened the Black Sea. The parties did not have to agree about the war to make that possible.

Making the agreements work meant bringing others to the table. Banks would not clear payments, insurers would not cover vessels and shipping companies hesitated. We brought them into the effort. Each obstacle brought another actor in, and each new actor added complexity but at the same time widened the possible paths to agreement.

This is the work the UN must do. The secretary-general can speak across divides and offer neutral ground on which to test a proposal. Governments do not have to agree on everything to take one useful step. Civilians granted safe passage, children vaccinated during a pause in fighting, electricity restored to a hospital: limited arrangements can change lives even as the search continues for a final settlement.

Any mediator knows that ten ideas may fail before the eleventh succeeds. Few governments can afford the political cost of so many rejections. The secretary-general can. The UN must become less risk-averse. Its biggest risk today is the risk of not trying.

UN reform must make that kind of action easier and more common. We need small, agile teams to bring economic, technological, political and security expertise to the same table, with authority to act while an opening remains. I have led that kind of change in national government and in regional and UN institutions. Duplication wastes money and obscures responsibility. Activities that have outlived their purpose must end. Today, 86% of mandates agreed by the General Assembly have no sunset clause. Trust is the scarcest and most valuable asset of diplomacy. The UN must regain it through discipline and delivery.

For most countries this is not an abstract debate about institutional design. They live with the effects of conflict they did not start, supply chains they cannot control and technological decisions in which they have little say. They need the UN more than ever, to help them navigate interdependence on their own terms and have more freedom to act. For nations large and small, a better multilateral system is not a constraint on sovereignty. It is the only realistic way to exercise it.

The forces pulling the world apart are real. So are the interests that still bring it together. Neither, on its own, determines what happens next. That depends on the choices made and the courage shown in pursuing them.

Rebeca Grynspan is the Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Read the guest essay by Rafael Grossi, another candidate for UN secretary-general