Guterres announces ‘UN80 Initiative’ to make world organisation relevant to today’s world
United Nations, March 12 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday launched the “UN80 Initiative” to transform the global organisation trapped in a time warp of its founding in 1945 to make it relevant to the present.
In a letter to member nations, Guterres said: “The governance mechanisms and practice of the international system continue to reflect the world as it was eighty years ago.”
While the world has “changed dramatically over the last eight decades, the multilateral system has not kept pace”, he wrote.
The UN’s eightieth anniversary this year is the “perfect moment” to expand the efforts for the “reforms that we have undertaken in recent years and the UN 2.0 process of innovation and modernisation”, he wrote.
Addressing the General Assembly about the letter and his plan for making the organisation relevant to the contemporary world, he said he was officially launching “the UN80 Initiative”.
For this, he said, he was appointing “a dedicated internal Task Force” led by Under-Secretary-General Guy Ryder to come up with suggestions for the member nations in three areas.
These were finding efficiencies and improvements in UN’s working; reviewing the implementation of all mandates given by members, and a “strategic review of deeper, more structural changes and programme realignment in the UN System”.
He said he wanted “to move as soon as possible in areas where I have the authority”, and “urge member states to consider the many decisions that rest with them”.
He specifically mentioned the UN’s finances as an area that needs review.
“Budgets at the United Nations are not just numbers on a balance sheet – they are a matter of life and death for millions around the world.”
“We must ensure value for money while advancing shared values,” he said.
Later, while speaking to reporters, the UN Secretary-General was asked if his “UN80 Initiative” was like President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) programme headed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk that has been cutting staff and ending several activities.
Guterres said: “Nothing to do with that kind of initiative. We are talking about completely different processes, methodologies, and objectives.”
“This is a continuation and an intensification of a work that we have always been doing,” he said, citing the example of UN agencies shifting some of their operations to Nairobi from more expensive locations.
Guterres acknowledged that “thousands of staff have been laid off by several agencies”.
But, he said the “agencies are resilient, and so, when necessary, they adjust to the circumstances” by changing staffing levels.
While the UN can adapt to financial constraints, it will be a matter of life and death for people around the world when humanitarian assistance is cut.
“More people will die with HIV/AIDS or with malaria or with TB, if humanitarian aid to fragile communities (is cut, it) will make their life even more difficult and will have dramatic consequences,” he said.
“We can adapt the UN, consolidate the UN, make the UN more effective and most cost-effective, what we cannot is solve the problems of the people that we no longer are able to assist for lack of resources,” he added.
Guterres, in his letter and the address to the General Assembly, did not mention the reform of the Security Council whose structure is ossified in post-World War II geopolitics that shut out all of Africa, Latin America and most of Asia from permanent membership.
Led by African nations, there is a strong push to put the Council reform on the agenda for change during the 80th anniversary of the UN’s founding this year.
