Significantly, as the United Nations prepares to elect its next secretary-general, it is also debating how to represent the world on a map. In September, the General Assembly gave broad support to an initiative led by Togo and the African Union to promote cartographic representations that more accurately reflect the true relative size of the continents. This is not merely a technical issue. Maps, like international institutions, embody particular ways of seeing and ordering the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coincidence is telling. The UN was created in 1945, after two world wars, with the primary objective of preserving international peace and security and preventing further large-scale armed conflict. The victorious powers built the new organisation around this priority and around the special responsibility they assumed for maintaining peace and security\u2014hence, above all, the architecture of the Security Council. But the new organisation was also born into a world that was still awaiting decolonisation. The 51 founding member states of 1945 have grown to 193, and much of that expansion resulted from the emergence of former colonial territories as independent states. Yet despite this transformation, the UN’s main power structures continue to reflect, to a considerable extent, the power relations of that era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world these institutions are meant to represent is no longer the same. The distribution of economic and political power has shifted; new centres of influence have emerged; and middle powers have acquired a capacity for action that often does not correspond to their weight within multilateral institutions. At the same time, rivalry among the major powers is making it increasingly difficult to build consensus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The election therefore comes at a particularly delicate moment. Ant\u00f3nio Guterres will leave office at the end of this year, after a decade marked by new wars, a pandemic, accelerating climate change and declining confidence in multilateralism. His successor will inherit an organisation facing severe financial constraints and an increasingly difficult relationship with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the expectations surrounding the election, it would be a mistake to attribute to the secretary-general a capacity for action that the institution itself does not possess. The secretary-general can provide political leadership, mediate international disputes, draw greater attention to particular crises and defend the principles of the Charter. He or she can also promote administrative and diplomatic reforms. What the secretary-general cannot do is substitute for the political will of member states. The UN is not a world government, and its top official cannot impose solutions when the major powers are unwilling to accept them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This distinction matters at a time when expectations of the organisation oscillate between disappointment and the temptation to look for alternatives. The UN remains necessary. The problem is that it is trying to manage a world in which the political conditions that made many of the post-war agreements possible no longer exist. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, rivalries in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, competition between the United States and China, and territorial disputes all demonstrate the extent to which international norms ultimately depend on states’ willingness to uphold them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, the debate over cartography offers a useful metaphor. The resolution does not simply seek to replace one map with another. It starts from a more uncomfortable premise: there is no single, neutral way of representing the world. Every projection selects, simplifies and distorts reality according to what it seeks to emphasise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something similar is happening with the international order. The problem is not simply that inherited institutions are imperfect, but that some of them no longer adequately reflect the current distribution of power, interests and expectations. This is particularly evident in the Security Council. Its composition and working methods, including the privileged position of its five permanent members, remain largely unchanged from 1945, even though the international landscape has been radically transformed. Countries and regions with growing economic, demographic and political weight are demanding representation that better reflects this new reality. The call for a greater African presence is perhaps the clearest example, but it is not the only one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this reason, the election of the next secretary-general matters for reasons that go beyond the choice of an individual. The process has incorporated elements of greater transparency: candidates have publicly presented their programmes, taken part in interactive dialogues with member states and civil society, and appeared together before the General Assembly. This is an attempt to make a process traditionally conducted through behind-the-scenes negotiations more visible and participatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decisive question, however, will not simply be who takes office, but which coalition of states will be willing to support the new secretary-general’s agenda. The next UN leader will need the diplomatic skills to navigate increasingly fluid and undefined blocs, while confronting a difficult paradox: he or she will be expected to strengthen multilateralism precisely when the most powerful states have the strongest incentives to act unilaterally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the role of the middle powers becomes crucial. For much of the post-war era, many of these countries were able to benefit from the international order without having to bear its full costs. Today, that position is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Australia, Canada, Japan, European countries and many democracies on other continents have different interests, but they share a significant dependence on institutions, rules and mechanisms of cooperation that none of them can sustain alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This requires them to go beyond simply advocating for multilateralism. If the great powers block an increasing part of the system, middle powers cannot simply demand that the international order return to the way it was. They will have to build coalitions, promote partial agreements and preserve spaces for cooperation when confrontation among the major powers prevents broader solutions. In a fragmented world, their influence will depend less on their individual weight than on their ability to coordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UN therefore faces a dual challenge: preserving what still works\u2014from humanitarian assistance and peace operations to cooperation on health, climate and development\u2014while adapting to a distribution of power that is fundamentally different from the one that existed when the organisation was created. Reforming this architecture without dismantling the cooperation mechanisms that remain indispensable will be one of the main tasks facing the next secretary-general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is within this narrow space that the new secretary-general will have to operate. But his or her capacity to act will depend above all on those states willing to turn their declarations of support for multilateralism into resources, commitments and political action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UN does not simply need a new leader. It needs its member states to acknowledge that the world for which it was created is no longer the same. Middle powers cannot redraw the map of global power on their own, but they can help determine which rules will continue to govern the emerging world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photography: United Nations General Assembly Hall, New York. Basil D Soufi. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Significantly, as the United Nations prepares to elect its next secretary-general, it is also debating how to represent the world on a map. In September, the General Assembly gave broad support to an initiative led by Togo and the African Union to promote cartographic representations that more accurately reflect the true relative size of the continents. This is not merely a technical issue. Maps, like international institutions, embody particular ways of seeing and ordering the world. The coincidence is telling. The UN was created in 1945, after two world wars, with the primary objective of preserving international peace and security\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":88886,"template":"","category_newspaper":[679],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-88925","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-679"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n