NEW YORK — Pressure to reform the United Nations and other global institutions has returned to the centre of international diplomacy as leaders gather for the 81st session of the General Assembly, with senior UN officials arguing that structures created for an earlier era need to respond to a more multipolar world.
Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly linked the credibility of multilateral institutions to their ability to reflect present-day political and economic realities. At the BRICS summit earlier this month, he said institutions including the UN Security Council and the Bretton Woods system need reform as global influence becomes more widely distributed.
The debate is broader than the Security Council alone. It includes questions of representation, financing, institutional effectiveness and whether multilateral bodies can act amid deep geopolitical divisions.
Representation remains a central fault line
The Security Council’s structure continues to be one of the most visible points of contention.
Its five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — retain veto power, while 10 other countries serve two-year elected terms.
Calls for reform have long focused on increasing the representation of regions and countries whose economic and demographic weight has grown substantially since the UN was founded in 1945.
Guterres has connected Security Council reform to a wider argument that a multipolar international system needs institutions capable of giving developing countries a greater voice.
The debate extends to global financial governance. He has also called for stronger representation for developing economies in international financial institutions, expanded development-bank capacity and more effective approaches to debt.
The General Assembly faces its own reform questions
Institutional reform is also being discussed inside the General Assembly itself.
At the close of the 80th session on September 8, outgoing General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock described UN reform as a priority and highlighted tensions over consensus, decision-making and the ability of the Assembly to make progress when members are divided.
Her successor, Khalilur Rahman, opened the 81st session by making the restoration of trust a central theme. He argued that rebuilding confidence requires both concrete results and reform, alongside greater accountability and institutional efficiency.
Those concerns form part of a wider challenge facing the UN: governments continue to rely on the organisation as a forum for diplomacy and international coordination even as disagreements among major powers frequently constrain collective action.
Reform remains politically difficult
Broad agreement that international institutions face strains does not translate into agreement on how they should be redesigned.
Security Council reform, in particular, raises difficult questions over additional permanent or elected seats, regional representation and the future of veto power. Different governments and regional groups have advanced competing models.
That makes sweeping institutional change difficult even when dissatisfaction with the status quo is widespread.
The current General Assembly session is therefore unlikely to settle the long-running debate by itself. Its importance lies in the renewed political attention being given to whether institutions designed eight decades ago can retain legitimacy and effectiveness in a markedly different distribution of global power.
For the UN, the central test will be whether calls for reform can move from broad declarations toward proposals capable of attracting the level of member-state agreement required for institutional change.