Trust and Transformation: A Tall Order for the UN in its 81st Year

The High-Level Week of the 81st Session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (UNGA) took place from September 18–28 in New York City under the theme “Restoring trust, managing transformation: A United Nations that delivers for all.” There was a distinct difference in the atmosphere of this year’s gathering. The 2025 General Debate, which also coincided with the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, was largely overshadowed by the Trump administration’s announcement to recalibrate its relations with the organization. One year later, the UN system is still trying to reconcile with the implications—and especially financial consequences—of this decision, but the overall mood at UNGA81 was a marked improvement.

The annual gathering also served as the last General Debate of the outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres, whose 10-year tenure will end in December. In the past decade of his two consecutive terms, the global environment has changed significantly. This is best illustrated, for example, by the prominent role of artificial intelligence (AI) during the gathering of Heads of States and governments in New York City and by the on-going war of aggression of Russia against Ukraine.

Ukraine: Russia’s War Remains on the International Agenda

Last year the war in Gaza dominated the gathering of Heads of States and Governments in New York. Although, Russia tries to keep their war of aggression from the international agenda, Ukraine was more prominent during UNGA81. The principal international law reference point remains the Charter prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of states, alongside international humanitarian law governing the conduct of hostilities.

During their statements at the General Assembly, The European Union has continued to emphasize Russia’s war primarily through these principles, with European Council President António Costa calling for an immediate ceasefire and stressing the importance of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States, while maintaining support for Ukraine, has placed greater emphasis on achieving a negotiated settlement. U.S. President Donald Trump told the General Assembly that Washington was collaborating with both Moscow and Kyiv, expressing confidence that negotiations could resolve the conflict, though he did not offer a specific strategy for lasting peace.

The positions of major G77 states illustrate a more differentiated approach. Brazil has traditionally emphasized negotiation, sovereignty, and the primacy of diplomacy rather than alignment with either geopolitical bloc. In his speech at UNGA81, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva noted that “there will be no winners on the battlefield” and stressed that “Diplomacy is the only option,” reflecting Brazil’s preference for resolving international conflicts through negotiation and multilateral engagement. India’s Minister of External Affairs, Dr. S. Jaishankar, presented India’s position. Addressing the General Debate, Jaishankar emphasized restraint, de-escalation, and diplomacy in responding to international conflicts. Regarding Ukraine, he stated that, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “endless war must give way now to an end to war”, adding that “India supports ongoing initiatives to bring peace.” South Africa’s UNGA81 intervention placed Ukraine within a broader critique of the erosion of international law, militarization, and unequal global governance and its application. Ronald Ozzy Lamola, South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, stated that, in recent decades, 70 percent of UN Security Council resolutions have focused solely on conflicts within Africa. These positions demonstrate that many governments of G77 countries do not necessarily reject the international law principles invoked in relation to Ukraine; rather, they frequently question their selective or politically inconsistent application.

UNGA81 made a significant contribution on Ukraine by reminding the world of their shared values: sovereignty, the non-use of force, civilian protection, humanitarian access, and peaceful dispute resolution. The main challenge lies in maintaining credibility. As Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st Session of the General Assembly, pointed out, the commitments outlined in the Charter lose legitimacy if states view them as selectively applied.

Furthermore, on September 23, 2026, the UN Security Council met during the UNGA’s High-Level Week to discuss the worsening humanitarian and security crisis in Ukraine due to the ongoing war. UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo warned of a “dangerous new phase” marked by intensified attacks and rising civilian casualties, reporting more civilian deaths and injuries in the first eight months of 2026 than in all of 2025. Concerns included cross-border incidents, nuclear safety, and disruptions to Black Sea navigation and food supplies. DiCarlo reaffirmed the UN’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and called for an “immediate, full, and unconditional ceasefire.” Most Council members and European states condemned Russia’s military actions, stressing that any peace settlement must uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and international law.

AI Comes of Age at the UN

AI took center stage at UNGA81, with 128 delegations addressing the technology in their remarks—up from just five four years ago. Yet beneath this convergence of attention lies far less agreement over what global AI governance should actually entail.

That divergence was most visible in the priorities and forms of governance states advocated during the General Debate. While delegations broadly acknowledged AI’s potential to advance medicine, scientific discovery, education, and economic development, there was much less agreement over how extensively it should be governed internationally. Swiss President Guy Parmelin captured the balancing act, arguing that the international community’s responsibility was to “enable progress and promote its benefits while creating the conditions for the reliable and responsible development and use of these technologies.” Some states called for considerably stronger international architecture. Singapore called for a UN framework convention on AI safeguards and an international institution capable of setting common technical standards and verification mechanisms. At the other end of the spectrum, U.S. President Donald Trump rejected “any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” AI, while emphasizing continued U.S. leadership in developing the technology “safely and responsibly.”

The debate also extended beyond how AI should be governed to who controls it. Brazil warned of the concentration of AI development in a small number of large corporations and their influence over its trajectory. Developing countries connected this concentration of technological power to a widening digital divide, calling for greater participation, access, and capacity-building. Pakistan cautioned that risk mitigation must not become a strategy of technological exclusion that aggravates existing asymmetries. Many African states similarly called for a stronger role in the development and governance of AI, linking the continent’s critical minerals to the technologies and infrastructure underpinning the AI economy.

The UN, for its part, has already begun building an architecture for AI governance. The 2024 Global Digital Compact laid the foundation for the Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. The first Global Dialogue convened in Geneva in July 2026, while the Panel has begun issuing assessments on emerging risks and governance challenges. Yet these mechanisms remain largely consultative and non-binding. UNGA81 nevertheless showed pressure building for more concrete oversight. Finland and Norway launched the Call for Control of Frontier AI Models, initially backed by 22 leaders, urging Member States to explore an international institution capable of setting standards, enabling verification, and convening states when agreed capability thresholds are crossed. The initiative declared that AI “must remain under human direction, oversight and control.”

These concerns took on a more existential dimension when France convened a high-level Security Council debate on AI and international security. The meeting came on the heels of several AI-related cybersecurity incidents, most notably the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident, in which AI agents under evaluation circumvented restrictions and compromised parts of both companies’ systems. The UN’s Independent Scientific Panel pointed to the episode as evidence that AI failures may not remain contained within a single company or even a single country. Scientific Panel co-chair Yoshua Bengio warned of three principal risks: catastrophic misuse, concentration of power, and loss of human control. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei similarly acknowledged that AI capabilities are advancing faster than institutions can respond, with Amodei calling for global cooperation on stronger evaluation and verification systems, common standards, incident notification, and prohibitions on AI-enabled biological weapons.

UNGA81 therefore marked a shift from debating whether AI requires global governance to confronting the much harder questions of who should shape that governance, whose interests it should serve, and whether international institutions can move quickly enough to keep pace. As Secretary-General Guterres reminded delegates, the underlying issue is ultimately one of power: “Who has it. Who is denied it. How it is used. And how it is changing.”

UN Reform: Inching Towards Relevance, Not Perfection

Amid compounding crises and growing uncertainty, multilateral cooperation—with the United Nations at its center—is needed more than ever. While this common thread ran through many statements at this year’s General Assembly, Member States also tempered their recognition with resounding calls for reform to make the organization more representative, inclusive, efficient, and effective. Well into its 80 decades of existence, the UN must evolve from the power structures and interests of 1945 to better reflect 21st-century realities and needs. “The world has moved on,” observed UNGA President Rahman, “The Organization must move on.”

UN80 Initiative: Launched in March 2025 by Secretary-General Guterres, and driven by Member States, the UN80 initiative seeks to reform, streamline, and modernize the UN system at a time of shrinking resources and growing challenges. It lays out an ambitious action plan—coordinated across three workstreams, 31 work packages, and 86 actions—to ensure that every mandate, dollar, and decision delivers greater impact for people and planet. Specifically, efforts along UN80’s primary workstreams aim to improve efficiency of the Secretariat; strengthen the creation, implementation, and review of mandates; and realign programmes and structures to better deliver results.

As the UN80 initiative has shifted from its diagnosis phase to action, there has been momentum across all workstreams, as highlighted by Norway during this year’s UNGA general debate. The cross-regional UN80 Global Group, co-founded by Norway and Mexico and launched in April 2025, was further spotlighted as a practical measure to advance the Secretary-General’s reform agenda. Notably, references to UN80 were sparse in Member States’ addresses, although a few, including Brunei Darussalam and Ecuador, specifically voiced support for the ongoing process. Despite having introduced in July 2025 a draft General Assembly resolution on the UN80 initiative, which was eventually adopted by consensus, the Russian Federation raised neither the process nor broader reform efforts in the general debate.

More predominantly, Member States urged reform of the United Nations in more general terms, reflecting the universal recognition that the organization cannot continue in its current state. Without mention to UN80, the United States praised the “most sweeping UN reforms in history,” citing a 15 percent budget decrease and cutting of more than 4,000 positions. Some Member States, though, including China and Singapore, cautioned that UN reform must not be a mere cost- and mandate-cutting exercise, but more structural and strategic in improving the UN’s effectiveness. Several G77 countries, such as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Guatemala, emphasized that reform must not sacrifice the balance across the UN’s pillars of peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights and that delivery in these core areas is key to measuring the organization’s effectiveness. Lastly, as the UN struggles to navigate its current liquidity crisis, countries such as Bulgaria reminded those in the General Assembly Hall that reform without resources is not possible, underscoring the need for predictable and sustainable funding.

Security Council Reform: In recent years, the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Iran—among other conflicts—have cast a harsh spotlight on the UN’s struggle to deliver on its promise of peace and security. Reflecting on the scourge of war, Member States, beginning with Brazil, sharply rebuked the Security Council’s inaction and the ”hostage-taking power” of a veto held by only a few.

A common refrain across Member States’ addresses was that Security Council reform is imperative for the UN’s legitimacy and credibility. Key to this will be ensuring greater representation on the Council, but the question of whom gets a seat at the table remains a perennial question for debate. As home to nearly one-quarter of the UN’s Member States and the subject of a majority of the Council’s agenda, African countries—as well as others beyond the region, including Kyrgyzstan—called for overdue permanent representation. South Africa emphasized that the continent can no longer be consigned to the “periphery of global governance,” while Kenya and Namibia lamented the seemingly endless negotiations on how to make the Council more representative, legitimate, and effective. Several Member States of the G77, such as the Philippines, Thailand, and Panama, also voiced support for better representation from the regions of Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. While neither the U.S. nor China address Security Council reform, Russia specifically backed the candidacies of India and Brazil, arguing that no more permanent seats should be granted to Western countries (namely Germany and Japan).

Beyond expanding membership, Member States also urged the Council to refind its ability to resolve conflict, lest the UN be reduced to a crisis-mitigating organization. As Barbados observed, “Reform is not only about who sits at the table. It is also about how power is exercised.”  Barbados went on to endorse the France- and Mexico-championed “Political statement on the suspension of the veto in case of mass atrocities,” supported by 128 States from across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa and highlighted in several addresses. On September 22, the United Kingdom also announced its endorsement of the statement, notably making it the second Permanent Member of the Council to commit. In a similar vein, some countries, like Malaysia, are pushing for more ambitious reform measures, calling for the abolishment of the veto powers of Permanent Members.

Reform as the Precondition to Meet New Global Challenges

The General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly accurately reflected current global challenges: from geopolitical tensions to massive technological transformation, sustainable development challenges to the shortcomings of an outdated institutional setup. If the UN system wants to regain trust, it will have to embrace reform, along with political and technological transformations. As evidenced by so many Member State addresses, the vast majority of countries see the value of the UN system; however, they also recognize that the status quo cannot continue any longer and that significant reform is needed. AI offers such an opportunity, as there is broad international consensus on the need for global guidelines with regard to these developments. The fact that the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic participated in the UN Security Council High-Level Briefing is remarkable and shows that leading private sector companies also see a role for the UN in this regard.