On 17 June 2026 the President and co-founder of GWL Voices, Susana Malcorra, was hosted by UNA-UK to discuss with a live audience the future of multilateralism and the state of the United Nations at a moment of profound pressure on the international system. Drawing on her decades of experience at the highest levels of the UN, government, and international affairs, she offered her frank assessment of where multilateralism stands today, the challenges facing the UN, and what meaningful reform might require.

Her opening remarks are recorded below.

Ms Malcorra served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentine Republic from 2015 to 2017. Prior to that, she served as Chef de Cabinet (Chief of Staff) to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and as Under-Secretary-General leading the Department of Field Support for UN Peace Missions. Earlier in her UN career, she served as Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Operating Officer of the World Food Programme. Before joining the UN, Ms Malcorra spent nearly twenty-five years in the private sector, including as CEO of Telecom Argentina. She is currently President and co-founder of GWL Voices, and previously served as Dean of the IE School of Global and Public Affairs in Spain.

GWL Voices unites global women leaders dedicated to improving conditions for humanity through our contributions in multilateral spaces. More information at https://www.gwlvoices.org/members.

Her opening remarks

It is a pleasure to join this discussion on the future of the United Nations and the broader challenge of renewing multilateralism.

I would like to begin with a simple (and obvious) observation: we are not living through an ordinary period of international adjustment. We are living through a moment of profound transition in which many of the assumptions that have underpinned international cooperation for the last eighty years are being questions simultaneously.

For decades, the international system created in 1945 provided a framework—imperfect, unequal and often contested, certainly—but nevertheless capable of delivering a significant degree of stability, prosperity and cooperation. It helped prevent direct confrontation among major powers, facilitated unprecedented economic growth, supported decolonization, expanded international law, and progressively broadened the international agenda to include development, human rights, climate action and global public goods.

Yet today, that system is under extraordinary strain.

We see growing geopolitical rivalry among major powers. We see wars and conflicts that challenge the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter, particularly by some of the ones who shaped it. We see the disruptive impact of emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. We see climate change accelerating faster than our collective responses. We see increasing inequalities within and among countries. And we see a growing gap between global challenges and the capacity of our institutions to address them.

The result is a paradox.

The need for multilateralism has never been greater.

And yet confidence in multilateralism has rarely been lower.

This is the central dilemma of our time.

Too often, discussions about the future of the United Nations become trapped between two unhelpful positions.

The first is nostalgia: the belief that if only states recommit themselves to existing institutions, the system can simply return to how it functioned in previous decades.

The second is fatalism: the belief that multilateralism has failed and that international cooperation should be replaced by purely transactional arrangements driven by power politics.

I believe both positions are mistaken.

The world of 2026 is not the world of 1945, 1989 or even 2015.

We cannot preserve the international system by pretending that power distributions, technologies, societies and the people’s expectations have not changed.

But neither can we afford to abandon the principles that have enabled cooperation across profound differences.

The challenge before us is therefore not whether to preserve or replace multilateralism.

The challenge is how to reinvent it.

And perhaps the first step is to recognize that what we are witnessing is not simply a crisis of institutions.

It is a crisis of political imagination.

Many of our institutions were designed for a world in which states were the dominant actors, power was concentrated in a relatively small number of countries, and threats moved at a much slower pace.

Today’s world is fundamentally different.

Power is more diffuse.

Technology evolves faster than regulation.

Private actors can have global influence comparable to that of many states.

And challenges such as climate change, pandemics, cyber threats, AI governance and large-scale migration cannot be managed by any country acting alone.

This means that the future of multilateralism cannot be built solely through institutional reform, allow me to emphasise the word “reform”, important as that may be.

It also requires a rethinking of how cooperation itself is organized.

We need a multilateralism that is more flexible without becoming fragmented.

More inclusive without becoming paralysed.

More representative without losing effectiveness.

And more capable of acting before crises become catastrophes.

This is particularly important for the United Nations.

The UN remains unique.

No other institution possesses its legitimacy, universality and convening power.

No other institution provides a forum where all states, regardless of size or power, have a voice.

No other institution embodies, however imperfectly, the aspiration that international relations should be governed by rules rather than force.

For all its shortcomings, the United Nations remains the closest thing humanity has to a universal political space.

And THAT matters.

Especially at a time when geopolitical competition is intensifying.

Especially at a time when trust is declining.

And especially at a time when fragmentation threatens to become the defining feature of international affairs.

Yet we should also be honest.

The future of multilateralism will not be shaped exclusively inside the United Nations.

Increasingly, cooperation is occurring through regional organizations, issue-based coalitions, city networks, private-sector partnerships, scientific communities and civil society initiatives.

The question is not whether these arrangements should exist.

They already do.

The question is whether they will complement the UN and reinforce its principles, or whether they will gradually substitute for it and accelerate fragmentation.

That is why renewing multilateralism requires us to think beyond institutional silos.

We need an ecosystem approach.

One in which different forms of cooperation contribute to shared objectives while remaining anchored in the principles of the Charter.

This also means recognizing the growing importance of middle and rising powers and bridge-building countries.

In a world increasingly defined by geopolitical competition, countries that are able to engage across divides have a critical role to play.

They can help create coalitions around practical solutions.

They can maintain channels of dialogue when others cannot.

And they can demonstrate that international cooperation is not merely an extension of great-power rivalry.

In many ways, the future of multilateralism may depend on the ability of these actors to generate political momentum where traditional leadership is absent.

Looking ahead, three areas seem particularly important.

First, peace and security.

The erosion of restraint among major powers is one of the most dangerous developments of our time. Creating guardrails against this is fundamental. Rebuilding confidence in collective security, strengthening preventive diplomacy and restoring respect for the principles of the Charter must remain central priorities.

Second, the governance of strategic resources and technologies.

Competition over critical minerals, energy systems, water, data, computing power and artificial intelligence is becoming one of the defining geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century. Without agreed frameworks, these dynamics risk becoming major sources of instability.

Third, the protection of global public goods.

Whether we are talking about climate, biodiversity, health security, food systems, oceans or migration, effective governance is increasingly a prerequisite for stability itself.

These are not separate agendas.

They are deeply interconnected.

And they all point to the same conclusion:

The future of multilateralism will depend less on our ability to defend existing arrangements than on our ability to adapt them to a rapidly changing world, our ability to set up forms of preventive governance in all these fronts.

But adaptation is not simply an institutional challenge.

It is also, and perhaps above all, a leadership challenge.

Yet institutions alone will not carry us through this transition.

Ultimately, the future of multilateralism will be shaped by whether leaders are capable of recognizing the scale of the transformation that is underway and responding to it with vision and courage.

If there is one feature that distinguishes the present moment, it is the widening gap between the magnitude of the challenges we face and the quality of the political leadership available to address them. Across much of the world, leaders are increasingly consumed by short-term political pressures, domestic polarization, and the demands of the electoral cycle or purposely feed into them. Too few are prepared to articulate a compelling vision that extends beyond national borders—or beyond the next election.

And yet history teaches us that moments such as this are ultimately defined by leadership.

The architects of the post-war order did not build the institutions we inherited during a period of stability. They acted in the aftermath of catastrophe. They understood that periods of disruption require imagination, political courage, and a willingness to invest in a future that cannot yet be fully seen.

Today, we need a similar quality of leadership.

Not leadership rooted in nostalgia for a disappearing order.

Not leadership driven solely by rivalry, grievance, or narrow conceptions of national interest.

But leadership capable of forging cooperation in a more complex, fragmented and multipolar world.

Leadership that understands that sovereignty and cooperation are not opposing concepts.

Leadership that can explain to citizens why multilateralism matters not as an abstract diplomatic exercise, but as a practical tool for security, prosperity and human wellbeing.

And leadership that is prepared to build bridges across divides rather than deepen them.

The challenge before us, therefore, is not only to renew our institutions.

It is to renew our capacity for collective political leadership.

Without such leadership, even the most sophisticated reforms will struggle to deliver meaningful results.

With it, however, periods of rupture can become moments of renewal.

So let me conclude.

The question before us is not whether the international order is changing.

It already is.

The question is whether we will shape that change deliberately or simply react to it.

Periods of rupture are dangerous.

But they are also moments of possibility.

Our task is to recognize that the institutions and arrangements we inherited, however valuable, are no longer sufficient on their own.

To have the courage to imagine new forms of cooperation.

To preserve the values that remain essential—human dignity, sovereign equality, peaceful coexistence, and collective responsibility for our common future.

And above all, to demonstrate the leadership necessary to carry those values forward into a new era.

The future of the United Nations and global cooperation will not be decided by institutional reform alone.

It will be decided by whether states, societies -the peoples- and leaders are willing to invest, once again, in the idea that cooperation remains not only possible, but indispensable.

Thank you.