This week on Inside Geneva, we take the pulse of the United Nations as it turns 80. “Someone celebrating their 80th birthday cannot be expected to be in tip-top shape. The UN is an old lady,” says Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director at the Kofi Annan Foundation. Some world leaders don’t have much time for the UN “All I got from the UN was an escalator that stopped halfway on the way up and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” said US President Donald Trump. Others think it needs an injection of fresh ideas. “We have to reimagine the UN, and reimagine multilateralism, from the point of confidence. And this confidence only comes once we account for the lived realities of people from the Global South,” says Prathit Singh, project coordinator at the Geneva Policy Outlook. “It’s just not the right answer anymore to have all these men in dark suits in conference rooms deciding the future of humanity,” continues Momal-Vanian. But we shouldn’t forget its successes: from eradicating ...
