UN, Reform & multilateralism 2026

21 September 2026
UNGA Convenes With Uncertainty on the Horizon
This year’s high-level gathering takes place as the Guterres era approaches its end.
(Foreign Policy) As the United Nations General Assembly opens this year, happy talk about future goals has ceded ground to a survivalist mindset. Even the theme of the 81st session of UNGA—“Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All”—reveals deep-seated anxieties. Trust that must be restored, after all, has been lost.
Global conflict is at its highest point since 1945. The 80th UNGA session did not bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine or the war in Sudan. In February, the United States and Israel began a new conflict in Iran that left Tehran in a position to menace the Strait of Hormuz. The Security Council is gridlocked: This month, Russia and China vetoed a U.S. bid to continue independent sanctions monitoring on Iran’s nuclear program.
All this has led to a sense of malaise at the United Nations. The organization’s sustainable development goals, or SDGs, are behind target—despite U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres leaning heavily on the SDG agenda. Guterres concludes 10 years at the helm at the end of this year. Diplomats at the U.N. headquarters in New York City are waiting to exhale as they speculate on how the Security Council will manage the selection process to replace him.
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman, the newly installed General Assembly president, said in a recent interview with Foreign Policy that he would consider trust restored if he could convince member states that much deeper reforms were needed.

23 September
Bob Rae: The Dynamics, High- and Low-Level, of the UNGA
The week was once largely confined to the General Assembly. While the general debate remains its centrepiece, high-level week now also involves tens of thousands of delegates, observers, lobbyists, advocates, critics, enthusiasts, and hangers-on meeting in countless venues.
There is “pre-HLW”, “post-HLW”, main meetings, side meetings, pull-asides, motorcades, limos, travelling medical teams and thousands of security guards, police officers, special-service SWAT teams, horns and sirens blaring, helicopters hovering overhead.
The most coveted item of this ecosystem is a credential, without which you are a non-person, a PNG, a high-level outcast. The credentials are carefully bedecked and colour-coded — because there is nowhere more status-conscious than the House of Equality and Inclusion, where all are said to be equal, but some are far more equal than others.
Amid the chaos, the jockeying, and the vortex of bilats, you will find — usually walking alongside a prime minister or a foreign minister — the “Perm Rep”, or permanent representative, smiling knowingly at a colleague. She or he winks and mouths the words “this too shall pass” as they both know the dozens of side meetings, assembly speeches, and receptions always do by the end of September.
As a former Perm Rep, I can attest to this firsthand.
Yet, through this chaotic noise some signals will have been planned. For the previous several months, staff have been in meetings in New York and far-flung capitals about how different countries want to use the events to push for their agenda.
UNGA week could bend the war — or miss again
Will UNGA Produce a Tangible US–Iran Outcome?
(Reuters) … Even as Trump on Tuesday warned the General Assembly that he faced a choice between a deal and annihilating Iran, envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were sending messages via Qatari shuttles to Iranian officials a few blocks away. Trump called it “a very good meeting”, while Gulf leaders huddled with US officials on next steps.
UNGA has produced real openings before. …
What makes UNGA week structurally different from ordinary diplomacy is proximity: nearly every relevant player is in Manhattan simultaneously, collapsing weeks of protocol into hallway conversations. … Having Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and the Gulf states all in the same city at once is the precondition for a breakthrough, however — not a guarantee of one.
… No matter what gets negotiated in Midtown Manhattan this week, what happens on the ground back in the Gulf has the potential to spoil it all. This war is being fought across multiple active fronts at once — Houthi missiles over the Red Sea, tankers threading the Strait of Hormuz, pipelines and export terminals within easy reach of Iranian-aligned groups — and a single incident on any of them could eclipse the entire diplomatic process.

1 October
Small States and Middle Powers are suddenly Banding Together at the United Nations
A Conversation with Liechtenstein’s Christian Wenaweser, the UN’s Longest-Serving Ambassador
(Global Dispatches) …at the outset of UNGA, there was an op-ed in the Financial Times, co-authored by Mark Carney of Canada, Lula of Brazil, Ruto of Kenya, and von der Leyen of the European Commission, announcing a new partnership for multilateralism. Liechtenstein quickly joined this partnership
…it’s important that the states that we believe are the vast majority of the UN membership, who believe in multilateralism, who believe in international law, that they come together and form an alliance and also overcome the differences that we do have with respect to international law. …
Christian Wenaweser: We are hoping to see an alliance of states that say, “Look, whatever our differences may be, and we have to talk about them, and we have to address them, and maybe we can overcome them, but we all want international law to govern international relations.” I mean, that’s the basic statement for us. And then there are various areas where you see that is necessary. And we would most like to see a movement that has sort of overlapping circles of states that focus on specific issues. So, there’s the issue of use of force, for example, which is at the heart of the throat of the United Nations, clearly under massive pressure today.
Then there’s, for example, the law of the sea cluster that is under pressure now: the Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, maybe other waterways, Black Sea. So, with sort of champions among states for specific issues, but a really broad movement behind it supporting that. We think that is how it could most effectively be taken forward

29 September
The Race for UN Secretary-General Has Come Down to Rebeca Grynspan — and Someone Else
The latest Security Council straw poll puts Grynspan firmly in front. But the real question is whether the eventual winner is even in the race yet.
MARK LEON GOLDBERG
(Global Dispatches) … Grynspan emerged decisively on top in this vote, with 10 votes in favor, three “discourages,” and two “no opinions.” The other candidates were far behind. In a distant second place was Guyana’s ambassador to the United Nations, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who secured eight votes in favor but six “discourage” votes. At this point, she and the other candidates, including IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, probably face insurmountable opposition. …
Grynspan is well known around the UN. She’s an economist and former Costa Rican politician who has risen through the ranks of the UN system to become head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, a Geneva-based UN body focused on helping developing countries use trade, investment, finance, and technology to support economic development.
It was from this position, in 2022, that she emerged as a prominent international negotiator.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year, food prices around the world soared. Ukraine is a global breadbasket, but its agricultural exports were effectively trapped. Grynspan became a key player in the UN-led negotiations that produced the Black Sea Grain Initiative and a parallel agreement aimed at facilitating Russian food and fertilizer exports. The resulting arrangements enabled Ukrainian grain to once again reach global markets. She has touted this experience as an example of how the UN can mediate even in the midst of a devastating conflict.
Grynspan, notably, is also of Jewish descent. Her parents were Jewish refugees from Poland who settled in Costa Rica. Grynspan, who is 70, often invokes her parents’ experience by calling herself a “daughter of peace.” This spring, she told the General Assembly: “Peace is what made it possible for my parents, two refugees from the Second World War, to find respect and dignity in a small country, Costa Rica. And they rebuilt their lives. I am the daughter of this peace, a demonstration of what peace makes possible and the principles which underpin that.”

26 September
Nicholas Kristof: The U.N. Is Terrible. We Need the U.N.
… Some 130 armed conflicts are underway around the globe, more than double the number in 2009, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a growing share of the challenges afflicting us are international and require multilateral solutions, yet the major powers are marginalizing the United Nations and rendering it even less effective than usual.
Fuel prices are surging. Trump’s Iran war has spread to Yemen and the Red Sea. Russia is engaging in so-called gray-zone attacks in Europe. There is a risk of war with China over Taiwan or the South China Sea. Drugs, epidemics, artificial intelligence, computer hacking, terrorism, human trafficking, climate change, the toll of war in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza, looming famine in Somalia — all these challenges demand cooperative responses, and the United Nations is an obvious forum to develop them.
Yet for many of these problems, the United Nations is becoming almost irrelevant.
Many times over the years I’ve wanted to beat my head against the wall in frustration with U.N. bureaucracy. In 2009, when I was covering the Darfur genocide with George Clooney, the U.N. pulled our security escort, for fear of being associated with any criticism that Clooney might make of Sudan for committing genocide. When Bosnians, Rwandans and Yazidis were slaughtered, the United Nations dithered. …
Critics can denounce United Nations workers as “fatally arrogant parasites,” as President Javier Milei of Argentina put it a few days ago, but I’ve been held at gunpoint alongside courageous U.N. humanitarians in the Central African Republic who were trying to bring assistance to a desperate area after other aid workers had fled. I’ve seen frontline U.N. workers living out of cargo containers in Somalia, sleeping in tents in South Sudan, driving down perilous roads in Congo and standing up to gunmen in Yemen — risking their lives to save children from war, rape and disease.
One of the heroes of the 20th century was James P. Grant, who led UNICEF and in 1982 engineered the child survival revolution. He and his team employed vaccines and better treatment of diarrhea to save 25 million lives in his lifetime, and countless millions since.
When have critics of the United Nations done anything half so noble?

Six big takeaways from a turbulent week of UN diplomacy
By Antoni Slodkowski
REBOOT OF IRAN DIPLOMACY
The UN was probably most useful for facilitating the first shuttle talks between American and Iranian officials since ‌the collapse of a ceasefire in July. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner communicated through mediators.

24 September
Israeli leader at UN: ‘We’re going to win. We have no other choice’
(UN news) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his address to the UN General Assembly to defend Israel’s strikes against Iran as a matter of national survival and described the violence in the West Bank as the work of a few “juvenile delinquents” and rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza as “the greatest lie of the century.”

23 September
Prime Minister Carney advances collective security, climate, and peace priorities at the 81st United Nations General Assembly
As the international order faces a rupture, Canada is stepping up to build and shape a new one. We are forging new partnerships, deepening our existing ones, and building a dense web of connections that will enable Canada to be a more influential force in the world. We are leading with our values to build greater security, stability, and prosperity for ourselves and our allies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, attended the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). He met with international leaders to discuss the world’s most pressing opportunities and challenges and to help shape a stronger United Nations (UN), better equipped to meet today’s challenges.
During his visit, Prime Minister Carney emphasised Canada’s commitment to multilateral cooperation. Canada joined Australia, Barbados, Brazil, the European Union (EU), India, and Kenya in launching a new Partners for Multilateralism (P4M) coalition on multilateralism, international law, and peace and prosperity to help strengthen the multilateral system and turn shared principles into practical action. Grounded in the principles of the UN Charter, P4M is a new forum that reaches across divides – connecting universal institutions, practical coalitions, and capabilities beyond government. It will help build trust among members, bring together those ready to act, and help promising solutions gain wider legitimacy and scale, advancing collective action on shared challenges from artificial intelligence and climate change to health security and digital transformation.

Sam Altman, Dario Amodei urge UN Security Council to adopt international AI standards
(CNN) The leaders of two of the world’s top AI companies are usually fierce rivals. But in front of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, they were in agreement: The AI industry needs international standards and cooperation, or risk global security.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei spoke separately to the council but both pleaded with world leaders to come together to help manage the threats posted by rapid AI developments and capabilities.
Zelensky Warns of Growing Global Cost of Russia’s War in Ukraine
Ukraine’s president said rising fuel prices and deadlier drone technology showed that years of fighting have spilled beyond his country’s borders. He called for steps to end to the war before winter.
Nawrocki warns UN over Russia’s actions in Europe
Poland’s president said Poland was strengthening its alliances and military capabilities for deterrence rather than confrontation.
(TVP World) Polish President Karol Nawrocki has called for a united international response after accusing Russia of destabilizing Europe through its war against Ukraine with hybrid operations and sabotage.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, he said: “Disregard for international law cannot become the norm,” describing Moscow’s conduct as “imperial hubris.”
The speech came during the 81st UN General Assembly, where Nawrocki has also held talks with world leaders. His New York visit has included discussions on regional security and closer defense cooperation with Washington, including a proposed permanent US Army base in Poland.
Milei threatens at UN that Argentina will take ‘matters into our own hands’ on Falklands
Argentinian president accuses United Nations of being filled with ‘parasites’ in bellicose general assembly speech

22 September
Superpowers cannot solve world’s problems, UN chief says in final general assembly address
(The Guardian) António Guterres says humanity faces unprecedented convergence of threats but mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain

Key moments from the first day of UN General Assembly speeches
Trump said he has a “big decision to make on Iran; France’s Macron called on Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on energy infrastructure and shipping
• Trump speech: US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly a deal with Iran is possible after the midterm elections, but his other choice is to “annihilate the Islamic Republic.” He also spoke about US munitions stockpiles and plans to establish a “large military presence” on Greenland. When he vowed that Cuba’s communist government “will fall,” the Cuban delegation walked out.
• Iran talks: President Masoud Pezeshkian has landed in New York to attend the General Assembly, Iranian state media reported. Earlier today, the US and Iranian delegations engaged in “lengthy talks” through mediators, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said.
• Meeting with Zelensky: Meanwhile, Trump said he thinks Ukraine and Russia will make a deal but did not give any specifics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky separately said he is ready for a trilateral meeting with Russia and the US.

Some Quick Thoughts on Trump’s UN Speech and UNGA Thus Far
AI and Middle Powers are Taking Center Stage
MARK LEON GOLDBERG
Trump’s Speech
This was a low-energy Trump speech, which was probably a relief for those around the United Nations. Yes, he predictably railed against “globalists,” but his tone was restrained.
… First, he threatened to annihilate Iran! The presidents of Iran, the United States, and Israel are all in New York this week, so there was some speculation that UNGA might spur diplomatic progress in the Iran war. Not so. This line seems to have ended any notion that the UN might be a place where progress is made on de-escalating the U.S.-Iran conflict.
Second, he bragged about exploiting the natural resources of a country whose leader he deposed! “To the victor go the spoils,” Trump said of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. I know it’s hardly unusual for Trump to say something like this, but it’s worth mentioning just how aberrational it is for an American president to make a statement like this on the grounds of an institution premised on preventing the kinds of wars of conquest that wrought the devastation that led to the advent of the UN 81 years ago.
Third, Trump’s remarks on artificial intelligence reflect his zero-sum view of the world. “Whoever wins Super Intelligence, wins,” he said, suggesting once again that he opposes guardrails that might slow progress on frontier AI models, fearing that any restrictions would give China a leg up.
This sentiment very much goes against the grain of the prevailing mood around the UN, which is that guardrails are needed to avoid the potentially calamitous consequences of runaway AI. Indeed, a succinct counterpoint to this worldview was offered yesterday by Finnish President Alexander Stubb. At an AI-themed event I attended, he said of the race for superintelligence: “It doesn’t matter who ‘wins.’ We are all screwed.”

Trump Threatens to ‘Annihilate’ Iran in U.N. Speech
Such warnings—on the U.N. stage, no less—could be considered war crimes.
War Crimes at the U.N.?
U.S. President Donald Trump presented a damning choice during his United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech on Tuesday: Make a deal with Iran that “lets them rebuild” or “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump posed, echoing past threats that experts have argued could be considered war crimes.
Although Trump’s warnings are not new, using the U.N. stage to deliver them brings a new dimension to the White House’s continued war of words against the institution’s human rights work.
The Trump administration has repeatedly denounced the U.N.’s justice-seeking bodies. Last Thursday, the White House rejected a U.N. fact-finding mission that found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the U.S. military committed war crimes when it launched separate strikes on an Iranian school and sports facility in February. And on Tuesday, he called the U.N. Human Rights Council “craven hypocrites” for its alleged failure to speak up against the persecution of Christians.
But he saved his toughest rhetoric for the U.N.-allied International Criminal Court (ICC). “You’re an evil group of people,” Trump said. He called on all ICC member countries to immediately resign

Outgoing UN chief says polluters have treated atmosphere like an ‘open sewer’
António Guterres laments world leaders’ inaction and says oil and gas firms ‘must pay’ for climate devastation
(The Guardian) For one last time, António Guterres tried to fix the world’s gaze upon the dangerously escalating climate crisis. But the departing UN secretary general found world leaders still largely focused on other issues, even after a painful summer of stunning climate-driven disasters.
Speaking to assembled dignitaries at the UN on Tuesday, Guterres railed against big oil for treating “the atmosphere as an open sewer” and warned again of the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis.
For one last time, António Guterres tried to fix the world’s gaze upon the dangerously escalating climate crisis. But the departing UN secretary general found world leaders still largely focused on other issues, even after a painful summer of stunning climate-driven disasters.
Speaking to assembled dignitaries at the UN on Tuesday, Guterres railed against big oil for treating “the atmosphere as an open sewer” and warned again of the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis.

21 September
Race to be next UN secretary general could rest on US and China trade-offs
Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor
(The Guardian) Numerous last-minute entrants in the race to become the new UN secretary general are being discussed amid concerns that the world powers may not be able to agree a successor to António Guterres from the current field of seven candidates.
Three rounds of secret ballots have so far not produced an obvious frontrunner, with probably only three candidates regarded as still having a realistic chance of gathering the required support.
The new leader, due to take office in January, will face an organisation at the start of a cost-cutting overhaul programme and seen as marginal to the major global conflicts.
… Names being mentioned as potential late drafts include Lana Nusseibeh, the minister of state at the United Arab Emirates and a former UAE ambassador to the UN, and Sigrid Kaag, a former UN under secretary general and Dutch centrist politician. She was briefly the senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza before joining the advisory committee to Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.
Other candidates mentioned include Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the polyglot president of Kazakhstan, and, in deference to the US, Viktor Orbán, the former prime minister of Hungary, who is still much admired by Trump but reviled as a disruptive populist by many European leaders.
Vuk Jeremić, a Serbian former president of the UN general assembly who came second behind Guterres in the 2016 race, has also been mentioned.
… A communique at the end of this month’s Brics summit attended by 21 countries, of which 10 are full members, said: “We note that no woman has ever been elected for the role of secretary general, and only one national from Latin America and Caribbean, and only two nationals from Africa and Asia each have ever occupied this position.”

9 September
António Guterres Leaves the U.N. as the Last Globalist Standing
Richard Gowan
(World Politics Review) Later this month, António Guterres will make his final speech to world leaders as United Nations secretary-general at the annual high-level session of the General Assembly in New York. His audience will listen respectfully, but their minds may drift elsewhere. U.N. members have spent much of 2026 debating who should succeed Guterres when he steps down at the end of his second five-year term in December. The selection process is underway, but it is still not clear who will win. Meanwhile, the incumbent’s window to shape global affairs has all but closed.
Nobody, Guterres included, would claim he is leaving the U.N. at an easy moment. His final two years in office have been overshadowed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed assault on multilateralism, as well as a proliferation of conflicts that the U.N. appears unable to halt. Guterres takes credit for navigating the organization through Washington’s steep budget cuts. But diplomats and international officials fault him for not pushing harder for peace in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan. The secretary-general tends to argue in response that the U.N. has little or no political leverage and must instead focus on what it can do to mitigate civilian suffering through humanitarian diplomacy and aid.