There is no alternative to multilateralism

The year 2025 should be a time of celebration, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the United Nations. But it risks going down in history as the year in which the international order built since 1945 collapsed.

The cracks were already visible. Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya, and the war in Ukraine, some permanent members of the Security Council have trivialized the illegal use of force. The failure to address the genocide in Gaza represents a denial of humanity’s most fundamental values. The failure to overcome differences is fuelling a new escalation of violence in the Middle East, the most recent chapter of which includes the attack on Iran.

The law of the strongest also threatens the multilateral trading system. Massive tariffs disrupt value chains and plunge the global economy into a spiral of high prices and stagnation. The World Trade Organization has been gutted, and no one remembers the Doha Development Round anymore.

The 2008 financial collapse highlighted the failure of neoliberal globalization, but the world remained tied to the austerity regime. The decision to bail out the ultrarich and large corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens and small businesses deepened inequalities. Over the past 10 years, the $33.9 trillion accumulated by the richest 1% of the world’s population is equivalent to 22 times the resources needed to eradicate global poverty.

The strangling of the state’s capacity for action has led to a loss of trust in institutions. Dissatisfaction has become fertile ground for extremist narratives that threaten democracy and promote hatred as a political project.

Many countries have cut cooperation programs instead of redoubling efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Resources are insufficient, their costs are high, access to them is bogged down in bureaucracy, and the conditions imposed do not respect local realities.

This is not about charity, but about correcting disparities rooted in centuries of exploitation, interference, and violence against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. In a world with a combined GDP of more than $100 trillion, it is unacceptable that more than 700 million people continue to suffer from hunger and live without electricity or clean water.

Rich countries are the main historical contributors to carbon emissions, but it will be the poorest countries that will suffer the most from climate change. The year 2024 was the hottest in recorded history, demonstrating that reality is moving faster than the Paris Agreement. The binding obligations of the Kyoto Protocol were replaced by voluntary commitments, and the funding pledges made at COP15 in Copenhagen — which provided for $100 billion annually — never materialized. The recent increase in military spending announced by NATO makes that possibility even more remote.

Attacks on international institutions ignore the concrete benefits that the multilateral system has brought to people’s lives. If smallpox is eradicated today, the ozone layer preserved, and labor rights still upheld across much of the world, it is thanks to the efforts of these institutions.

In times of growing polarization, terms like “deglobalization” have become common. But it is impossible to “deplanetize” our shared life. There are no walls high enough to preserve islands of peace and prosperity surrounded by violence and misery.

Today’s world is very different from that of 1945. New forces have emerged, and new challenges have arisen. If international organizations seem ineffective, it is because their structure no longer reflects current realities. Unilateral and exclusionary actions are exacerbated by the vacuum of collective leadership. The solution to the crisis of multilateralism is not to abandon it, but to rebuild it on more just and inclusive foundations.

This is the understanding that Brazil — whose vocation has always been to contribute to cooperation among nations — demonstrated during its G20 presidency last year, and continues to demonstrate this year through its leadership of the BRICS and COP30: that it is possible to find common ground even in adverse scenarios.

It is urgent to insist on diplomacy and rebuild the structures of a true multilateralism capable of responding to the cries of a humanity that fears for its future. Only in this way will we stop being passive witnesses to the rise of inequality, the senselessness of wars, and the destruction of our own planet.

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