Challenging primacy of BWIs urgent as threats to UN and multilateralism deepen
•
Article summary
UN80 reform process and establishment of ‘Board of Peace’ increase threats of erosion of UN’s role and raises the stakes of debates about the role of the BWIs within the wider international finance architecture.
On 18 September 2025, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres presented a report on the UN80 initiative titled Shifting Paradigms: United to Deliver. While the UN reform process is presented as an effort to meet the challenges of our time, the process and report are skewed toward cost savings and efficiency gains (see Observer Autumn 2025), focusing extensively on duplication of mandates and a streamlined system.
On 15 October, the Group of 77 and China reacted to the report stressing that, “the UN80 process must strengthen, not dilute, multilateralism”, and that, “every mandate…should be treated equally, regardless of its funding source….” The stakes for the development needs of low- and middle-income countries was evident in the United States’s reaction, which ignored the UN’s human rights and development pillars, focusing instead on the need for the UN to “get back to basics” and to “maintain [sic] international peace and security while respecting the national sovereignty of Member States.”
Given the disappointing results of the Fourth UN Financing for Development Conference in Seville in July 2025 (see Observer Summer 2025, Spring 2025), particularly in addressing the governance shortcomings of the World Bank and IMF and their role within the wider international financial architecture, the question of “mandate duplication”, and the broader role of the UN remain pivotal. The establishment of the Board of Peace by the United States, which is seen by some as a direct threat to the UN (see Observer Spring 2026), adds further pressure on efforts to safeguard the UN and multilateralism more broadly.
