The United Nations General Assembly marked the 80th anniversary of its establishment in September 2025, and reforming the Security Council in addition to financial institutions and multilateral organizations was one key prominent question raised by global leaders, regional organizations, and other concerned individuals and civil groups.
United Nations reforms are necessary to enhance effectiveness, accountability, and representation. The UN faces numerous challenges that hinder its ability to address global issues effectively. Here are key reasons for reform:
1. Increased Global Challenges: The rise of complex global issues such as climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical tensions requires a more agile and responsive UN.
2. Representation and Inclusivity: Current structures often do not reflect the geopolitical realities of the 21st century. Reforms can help ensure that all member states, especially developing nations, have a voice in decision-making.
3. Accountability and Transparency: Enhancing accountability mechanisms can improve trust in the UN’s operations and decisions, ensuring that resources are used effectively and ethically.
4. Efficiency in Operations: Streamlining processes and reducing bureaucratic hurdles can enable the UN to respond more swiftly to crises and implement programs more effectively.
Criticisms of the current UN structure include several key issues.
Several reforms have been proposed for the UN structure to enhance its effectiveness and accountability. These reforms focus on various aspects of the organization, including governance, representation, and operational efficiency.
Inefficiency and Bureaucracy: The UN is often criticized for its slow decision-making processes and bureaucratic inefficiencies, which can hinder timely responses to global crises.
Power Imbalance: The structure, particularly the Security Council, is seen as outdated. The dominance of the five permanent members (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, and China) raises concerns about equitable representation and decision-making.
Limited Accountability: There are calls for greater accountability within the UN, especially regarding peacekeeping missions and human rights violations. Critics argue that member states often evade responsibility for their actions.
Inadequate Funding and Resources: The UN frequently faces budget constraints, limiting its ability to effectively carry out its missions. This can lead to underfunded programs and insufficient support for humanitarian efforts.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlining Bureaucracy:Proposals to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and improve the responsiveness of UN agencies. Focus on Results:Emphasizing outcome-based evaluations to ensure that programs effectively address global challenges. These reforms aim to make the UN more representative, accountable, and capable of addressing contemporary global issues effectively.
In late September speeches, the quest for reforms resonated deeply as “unacceptable, unfair, and fundamentally unjust” across the United Nations conference hall in New York. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—namely the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—hold veto power, allowing them to block resolutions unilaterally. This privilege is not afforded to any African nation. The African Union (AU), which consists of 55 members, has also been left out in many international organizations.
Charity Starts at Home: The African Union First Needs Reforms
Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, emphasized that “reforming the international financial system is no longer optional but an urgent imperative.” He further underscored the primary facts that Africa faces rising debt, high capital costs, and illicit financial flows draining $88 billion annually. To break cycles of dependency, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf proposed the following measures:
- Strengthening African institutions and capital markets.
-Establishing an African Credit Rating Agency.
-Integrating African perspectives in global tax cooperation
-Ensuring sustainable solutions to debt.
And further to that, the AU “welcomes the consensus on scaling up development finance” but cautioned that “what matters now is turning commitments into action—to deliver on the SDGs—Africa’s Agenda 2063.” The AUC Chairperson emphasized that “reforming the international financial system is no longer optional but an urgent imperative” and finally added, “Together with the UN and global partners, we stand ready to transform consensus into results that change lives.”
These past few years, the majority of African leaders have consistently called for substantial reforms within the United Nations Security Council. In a similar direction, corporate leaders also seriously confront the United Nations and have asked for addressing systemic reform-related challenges.
WTO—Multilateral Trading System in a Fractured World
In April 2025, Friends of Multilateralism, with a cohesive voice, articulated a strong appeal to undertake urgent reforms, expressing widespread concern about the ongoing situation with the turbulent and disruptive unilateral non-WTO-conforming trade measures and the uncertainty created, and outlined explicit implications for the World Trade Organization (WTO), headed by Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Geneva, Switzerland. The non-state group pointed blankly to the stalemate on WTO reforms and sought resolutions for measures in that direction.
The group stated the recurrent theme was the increasing fragility of the multilateral trading order. Participants expressed deep concern over the rising trend of economic unilateralism, particularly the imposition of arbitrary tariffs by dominant global actors. This threatens to further fragment global trade by pushing countries—especially vulnerable African states—into precarious bilateral deals that are often skewed against their interests.
The erosion of predictability and stability in the WTO system, largely due to the disengagement of some major economies, was viewed as a direct threat to investment flows and long-term development planning. Participants were unequivocal in their call for a revitalized, rules-based multilateral system—one that does not hinge on the whims of any single power. Yet, there was caution against retaliation. The disengagement of any single country should not dictate the future of the trading system. Instead, African countries were urged to champion reforms that democratize decision-making and prioritize inclusivity and development.
It is simply worth summarizing that from the United Nations through other multilateral institutions such as the WTO to the continental African Union and Africa’s regional blocs, they are experiencing stark multilateral deadlocks. Several aspects of reforms, including governance, effectiveness and accountability, and operational efficiency, are critical questions to address in order to better reflect current geopolitical realities. Until today, the multilateral reform deadlocks are primarily due to observing first-class verbosity and political symbolism at high-level conferences in this contemporary world.
