UNITED NATIONS: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE IN CRISIS
- The UN faces mounting crises that are outpacing its ability to respond, as powerful states increasingly assert narrow national interests over international cooperation.
- The UN’s Summit of the Future fell short of civil society’s hopes, with civil society participation limited and the final document long on platitudes but short on actionable commitments.
- Civil society proposes reforms to revitalise the UN, including digital participation, a civil society envoy and a more transparent Secretary-General selection process.
The world’s many current crises – including conflicts, climate breakdown, economic inequality, democratic regression and attacks on rights– are overwhelming the capabilities of global governance institutions designed to address problems beyond the capacity or willingness of states to solve. Emerging technologies such as AI and associated challenges such as disinformation urgently require new global solutions.
The UN bodies that began to develop in the wake of the Second World War have proven unable to prevent continuing human rights atrocities, from Gaza to Ukraine to Sudan. The UN’s founding Charter articulates four principles: preventing future wars, affirming fundamental human rights, dignity and equality, establishing conditions for justice under international law and promoting social progress and improved living standards. There’s currently little to no progress on any of these.
The post-Cold War era of international cooperation, which produced major global agreements aimed at addressing contemporary problems, is unquestionably over. Today it would be inconceivable that a global deal to halt runaway climate change could be forged, or that all UN member states would unanimously adopt the SDGs, with their strong human rights and social justice focus – yet both these landmark achievements happened in 2015, just a decade ago.
Many political leaders now strongly champion a narrow interpretation of national sovereignty. Powerful states increasingly prioritise self-interest and transactional politics, including in their roles within international institutions, entirely against the spirit of global cooperation.
The result is blatant hypocrisy as states selectively invoke or ignore international laws and norms according to what suits them. This is exemplified by the way numerous global north states led international accountability efforts against Russia but blocked the same for Israel.
All these trends were underway when Trump returned and immediately announced US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the termination of US engagement with the UN Human Rights Council. The crisis in international cooperation has now dramatically accelerated.
In these turbulent and fast-changing times, the UN had an opportunity to refresh itself in 2024 by holding its much-touted Summit of the Future, which issued the Pact for the Future, alongside the Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations.
Mural ‘Woman with Dove – Shaping Our Common Future’ by Australian artist Fintan Magee at UN premises in Vienna, promoting the SDGs and the Summit of the Future. Photo by Eva Manhart/AFP via Getty Images.
The summit’s purpose was to strengthen international cooperation on key challenges, address gaps in global governance and reaffirm the UN Charter and other crucial global commitments. But what began as an ambitious idea in 2021, when UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the Our Common Agenda report with the aim of revitalising international cooperation and reforming the UN, lost its ambition as the world became more fragmented and national self-interest expressed more nakedly. It became more about defending and consolidating multilateralism than improving it. It was a sign of how difficult it currently is to reach any agreement that states had to rally at the summit to defeat a late attempt by Russia to defer the pact’s adoption.
Civil society worked hard to try to influence the pact during its two-year development process, taking part in online consultations and a conference held in Nairobi, Kenya in May. But the process fell far short of the open, participatory and inclusive approach civil society wanted. Few governments consulted directly with civil society, and some argued it shouldn’t have any role.
Civil society saw some potential advances in the pact , including proposals to enlarge, if not properly reform, the Security Council and accelerate restructuring of the international financial architecture. For the most part, however, this was a disappointing outcome that failed to meet the moment, a text long on platitudes but short on the practicalities of implementation. The conditions were such that a more ambitious outcome was probably never on the cards.
At least, following extensive civil society campaigning, Saudi Arabia was excluded from membership of the UN’s key human rights body. The 47-member Human Rights Council exists to address human rights violations and other situations of concern and strengthen the protection and promotion of human rights. Elections are held annually for around a third of members, which serve three-year terms with a maximum of two consecutive terms. States are grouped into five regional blocs, each of which has a set number of seats available each year.
Media at work during the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, 9 September 2024. Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images.
Saudi Arabia, a systematic human rights violator with closed civic space, numerous political prisoners and an appalling track record in executing people, has spent vast amounts of money on laundering its international reputation. In 2024, it succeeded in its bid to become chair of the Commission on the Status of Women when no other state stood against it, a grotesque outcome given that it treats its women as second-class citizens. But in the Human Rights Council election it came sixth and last in a competition for five seats in its region.
The problem is that several other states with troubling human rights records won seats. In 2024, they included the DRC, Ethiopia and Qatar. This means 27 of the Council’s current members, way over half, have serious civic space restrictions, while only six members have open civic space. Disgracefully, nine current Council members are named in the latest annual report on countries where reprisals have been committed against people who’ve cooperated with the UN human rights system.
A big reason for this is non-competitive elections, which have become the norm. Regional blocs tend to nominate only as many candidates as there are seats available. This means that while votes are still held – and can offer a chance to symbolically withhold support – the Council’s membership is largely predetermined.
Civil society continues to call for genuinely competitive elections, which could help keep the worst offenders off the Council and offer a valuable opportunity to expose human rights violations, push for higher standards and open up more debate around states’ performance.
Amid intense international scrutiny, Saudi Arabia fails to win a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, but its whitewashing efforts are rewarded with hosting rights for the 2034 FIFA World Cup. Photo by Christophe Viseux/Getty Images for the Saudi Arabian Football Federation.
There’s another persistent problem: human rights are one of the UN’s three pillars, alongside sustainable development and peace and security. But this pillar consistently gets under five per cent of the UN’s annual funding. Many initiatives, including special rapporteurs on countries experiencing human rights emergencies, rely on voluntary funding. This is usually slow in coming and falls short, affecting their ability to operate, as was the case with the Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan.
There’s a broader issue of non-payment of dues. As of February 2025, only 65 states had paid their contributions in full. The already underfunded human rights pillar can least afford this withholding of resources, particularly from states that can always find the money for military spending.
Consistent underfunding also limits the prospects of enhancing civil society access, and the space civil society currently has could be at risk of being further limited on cost-saving and efficiency grounds. A review of the Council scheduled for 2026 offers an opportunity to address these issues, and the UN must ensure civil society voices are heard as part of this process.
But now the USA’s selective withdrawal from the international system threatens to further weaken the UN. Although the USA has sometimes been an obstructive force, including when blocking Security Council resolutions on Israel, global institutions lose legitimacy when powerful states opt out. While all states are formally equal in the UN, the reality is that the USA’s decisions to participate or pull out matter more than most because, as well as being a superpower, it’s the biggest funder of UN institutions, even if it has a poor record in paying on time.
As it stands, the USA’s WHO withdrawal will take effect in January 2026, although the decision could face a legal challenge as it’s questionable whether Trump has the power to overturn the congressional resolutions by which the country joined. It’s also possible Trump could rescind his decision if the WHO makes changes to his liking, since deal-making powered by threats and brinkmanship is his way of doing business. But if withdrawal happens, the WHO will be hard hit. The US government is the WHO’s biggest contributor, providing around 18 per cent of its funding. That’s a huge gap to fill, and it’s likely the organisation will have to cut back its work. Progress towards a global pandemic treaty, under negotiation since 2021, may be hindered.
It’s possible philanthropic sources will step up their support, and other states may offer to help fill the gap. The challenge comes if authoritarian states take advantage of the situation by increasing their contributions and expect greater influence in return. China, for example, may be poised to do so.
That’s what happened when the first Trump administration pulled out of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). China filled the vacuum by increasing its contributions to become UNESCO’s biggest annual funder and, presumably not coincidentally, a Chinese official became its deputy head, 56 Chinese sites received coveted World Heritage status and China was able to block Taiwan’s attempts to join. It was out of concern about this growing influence that the Biden administration took the USA back into UNESCO in 2023; that decision could be reversed, as Trump has claimed UNESCO is biased against the USA and ordered a review.
The WHO has already been accused of being too influenced by China over the decisions it made during the pandemic, when it was criticised as too readily following the Chinese government’s line and failing to scrutinise the outbreak’s origins properly. China also successfully lobbied to deny Taiwan observer status at WHO meetings – flying in the face of the reality that public health issues like pandemics don’t respect borders. Civil society should be wary of signs of state capture of multilateral institutions.
World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus advocates for a global pandemic treaty in the wake of COVID-19. Photo by OJ Koloti/Gallo Images.
The Human Rights Council may be less immediately affected because the USA isn’t currently a member, its term having ended at the close of 2024. It rejoined in 2021 after Trump pulled out in 2018, and had already made the unusual decision not to seek a second term, likely because this would have provoked a backlash over its support for Israel. Apart from its relationship with Israel, however, during its term under the Biden administration the USA was largely recognised as playing a positive role in the Council’s business. If it refuses to cooperate, it also deprives US citizens of a vital avenue of redress.
A further danger is that the USA’s actions might inspire other states with extremist leaders to follow suit. Argentina’s President Milei, a keen Trump admirer, has already imitated him by announcing his country’s departure from the WHO. Israel followed the USA in declaring it wouldn’t engage with the Human Rights Council. Both cited alleged anti-Israel bias. For its own reasons, in February 2025 authoritarian Nicaragua also announced its withdrawal from the Council following a report critical of its appalling human rights record.
A domino effect still seems unlikely, and it could be argued that institutions like the Human Rights Council and UNESCO, having survived one Trump withdrawal, can endure a second. But that depends on what happens at the end of Trump’s second term. These shocks also come at a different time, when the UN system is already more fragile and damaged. Now the very idea of multilateralism and a rules-based international order is under attack, with hard-nosed national power taking its place. Backroom deals resulting from power games are replacing processes with a degree of transparency aimed at achieving consensus. The space for civil society engagement and opportunities for leverage are shrinking accordingly.
Revitalising the UN may sound like a tall order in a time of crisis, but civil society has some ideas about how to start putting people rather than states at the UN’s heart. The UNMute Civil Society initiative, backed by over 300 CSOs and numerous states, makes five calls to improve civil society’s involvement: using digital technologies to broaden participation and inclusion, bridging digital divides by focusing on connectivity for the most excluded, changing procedures and practices to ensure effective and meaningful interaction and participation at all stages, creating an annual civil society action day as an opportunity to stocktake and assess progress on civil society participation and appointing a UN civil society envoy.
Each of these ideas is practical and easily achievable, and could open up space for greater reforms. A UN civil society envoy could, for example, promote best practices in civil society participation across the UN, ensure a diverse range of civil society is involved in the UN’s work and promote the UN’s engagement with civil society around the world.
Civil society is also calling for competitive Human Rights Council elections, with a role for civil society in scrutinising candidates, and limits on Security Council veto powers. In addition, the We the Peoples campaign, supported by over 200 CSOs and more than 100 parliamentarians from around the world, proposes the introduction of a World Citizens’ Initiative to allow people to mobilise to collect signatures to put an issue on the UN agenda. A further proposal is to establish a UN Parliamentary Assembly to complement the General Assembly and give a voice to citizens as well as states.
And as time approaches to pick a new UN Secretary-General, civil society is mobilising the 1 for 8 billion campaign, pushing for an open, transparent, inclusive and merit-based process that reflects the UN’s ideals and enables appropriate input from civil society. The office has always been held by a man, and the call is for the UN to make history by appointing a feminist woman leader to the role.
These are all just small steps towards making the UN system more open, democratic and accountable. There’s nothing impossible or unimaginable about these ideas, and times of crisis create opportunities for experimentation. A more inclusive UN will be a more effective UN. It’s time for the UN to embrace civil society’s ideas and work with the states that support them as well as civil society, as the start of a journey to make the UN Charter a reality.