An Open Conversation On The Future Of Internationalism | Goals Lounge

Hi, everyone. And welcome to Gull's Lounge. And I'm going to just ask for the teleprompter. We're super excited to have everyone with us because we're in a moment now that we're living through a period of profound change. New voices are emerging, new partnerships are taking shape, and that's why this open conversation about the future of internationalism is so crucial. That makes this a particularly interesting moment to ask, what comes next? How do we ensure that countries have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them? How do we build partnerships that bring different perspectives and strengths to the table? And how do we ensure that international cooperation continues to deliver for people in a changing world? I fully expect that with your engagement, today's discussion will be open, constructive, and forward-looking. And I'm also looking forward to hearing new ideas about how we can lift the spirit of cooperation. I want to thank James Harding, editor-in-chief of The Observer, Alexia La Tortue, and Kate Garvey of Project Everyone for entrusting us with this open conversation that will be broadcast all over the world on multiple channels. And with that, a very warm welcome to Gold's Lounge, and a very welcome to you, James. Over to you.

Thank you, Emily.

Thank you very much, Anne-Marie. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming. As Anne-Marie said, I'm James Harding. I'm the editor of The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, and founded in 1791 with the promise to share all species of knowledge that conduces to the happiness of society. And so we meet, I hope, in that spirit. We meet thanks to, as Anne-Marie says, Kate Garvie and Project Everyone, Alexia and the Coalition. And I love the fact that we are brought together by people who have Coalition and Everyone in their title, because the aim of this is to have a conversation in the room. I was going to say at the start of this that This is a different kind of meeting at the UN General Assembly, where it's very clear that the wisdom is not on the stage, but in the room. But many people who've been to UNGA before will say, actually, that's often the case, that the wisdoms in the room are not on the stage. Just to give you just a sense of what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it differently, I hope that in the course of the next hour, we will just try to stick to one question, what is the new multilateralism? And I say that, though, with three health warnings. The first is that I remember a few years ago, I did an event with the late, great Madeleine Albright, and she said to me, Americans don't like multilateralism. It's a word with lots of syllables, and it ends with an -ism. And so I would hope that we can try to think about this question really with an eye to what is the future of working together? Where are we going to work together? Where are the places we'll come together? What are the issues that will force us or bring us together? And what are the rules under which we'll work together? And I'd like to think that we're going to have this conversation at a moment where there's a renewed optimism, in fact, about multilateralism, a sense that it's starting again. And so what we're really looking for are those concrete ideas, those ideas that you can drop on your foot that say, look, this is what the new multilateralism will look like. And so with that in mind, my second health warning is to say to all of the extraordinary people that the team from Project Everyone and the Coalition have brought together, we're going to ask you the preposterous task of trying to answer that question in just two minutes. So I'm going to come to each of you for just two minutes. The formidable Kate Edwards is going to wave that red flag if you're over two minutes. Not the most frightening thing in the world, but I think a nudge that suggests, could you keep to the two minutes? But the reason for that is what we would really love to do is make the most of this sort of extraordinary space that Anne-Marie has created here, where we can have a real conversation. And so that we hear from everyone and then that people will pipe up and chime in. I appreciate this is ungar. I appreciate some people will have to leave at certain points during the course of it. But at the end, I hope that we will be able to pull together some of the ideas. We're really lucky to have Arunja, the Dean of Science Po here. And we'll try together to distill the things that we've heard. And there's one ulterior motive in all of this. As you know, in this room, there are six cameras. So if you're about to say something off the record, good luck. There are six cameras and what we really hope we can do is bring together a series of clips that we will then pull together into one film but also into a series of shorter films. It's also an encouragement to make sure that everyone keeps to the two minutes. So with that, I'm going to get started. I'm going to ask Sala Jama, the Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia, to start off and I hope you'll model the two minutes, Deputy Prime Minister. And do keep in your seats because the cameras are aimed at you new chairs.

Well, thank you very much. I'm not sure if two minutes and politician is going. I'll try my best. And it's an honor to be here where practitioners, thinkers, and leaders are contemplating about the future of multilateralism, internationalism, or whatever name you may give it. As a representative of Somalia, a country that has had its share of experiences with internationalism, regionalism, and domestic experiments that we went through for the last 30 years. I would like to start with the following observation, that we in the Global South, particularly in Africa, believe in internationalism, albeit more defined and more purposeful to the contemporary times. And I think, although there are a lot of pessimism about whether the current arrangement or the model of multilateralism has worked for all of us, because many of us were not at the table when many of its institutions were being put in place, we still believe that there is no other alternative to cooperation at the international level, and that is to the benefit of everybody. We also must factor in the whole host of new challenges that are becoming quite pervasive from food insecurity, supply line issues. Maybe some of you in America or Europe see this occasionally, but for us, crisis is an actual state of being, a permanent state of being. Just before coming from Somalia, I met with those that import fuel into Somalia, and they were telling me that it could be very challenging for them to sustain the most basic needs for the coming two months or so. For a country that just concluded a hippic initiative for one of the, you know, great initiatives of the contemporary global system for a country that is emerging from a post-conflict state for a country that is reintegrating into institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the IMF, multilateral institutions. We're a bit surprised to see that the very institutions that we were counting on are being questioned. So our perspective is yes, we need multilateralism. but there are much more equitable and sustainable mechanisms.

And Deputy Prime Minister, can you just tell us, you know, you were talking to Alexia before we came in, just about what the retreat, certainly the financial retreat from multilateralism means for Somalia, what you're experiencing in terms of the funds that you might have expected, you know, not being available.

Well, I think it is not a secret that the resources that used to go to multilateral institutions that will work on humanitarian assistance and development assistance have been declining in the last many years because of the changing change in the policy options and priorities of the donors. And we are also not seeing a lot of alternatives in terms of nontraditional donors. So for a country that is already coming out of a debt distress and not getting into high loans and very little private capital coming our way because of the rating system and whatnot that is not at our disposal, we are really caught between a rock and a hard place. And also for a country that is constantly hit either by floods, El Nino is around the corner, and droughts. So multilateralism and internationalism was one of our few hopes to count on, but it's being highly questioned now. And we see more optimism than the pessimism. We hope we can reinvent one that works for all of us. And we appreciate the world has moved on to investment. Many of the donors are now talking about investment models rather than development assistance. And we are up for that. but we need more collaboration and more equitable arrangements.

Deputy Prime Minister, thank you. Ngozi, can I come to you? So many people would say that the best hopes for the new multilateralism, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is you. What's your vision of what a new multilateralism would be?

Well, thank you. That's surprising to hear, given that WTO is in the eye of the storm. But I'll respond to that. Very well said, Mr. Deputy Prime Minister. I think if we don't like the word multilateralism, can we talk about global cooperation? Yeah. That is really easier for the ordinary person to understand. And that there are certain things, I think even the person on the street will agree that on health issues, when there are pandemics, no one country can solve it on its own. Okay, when climate change, they may not know the word climate change, but I always say my village farmers were asking, telling me that, look, it's rained so much now that they don't know the crops are rotten. They don't know the rains come a bit earlier and stay a bit later. They don't know when to harvest and so on. And they said things have changed. What is happening? So even if they don't know the word, there's something happening that they can see that is changed. So if you explain, and then you have to tell them this thing has to do with many other countries, that certain things happened in the world, and we have this warming, and you go into a great bit of detail. All I'm trying to say is that the climate change impact is everywhere, in the villages, And it needs global cooperation to solve it. Trade needs global cooperation. You can't trade with yourself only. You have to trade with others, whether domestically or externally. So maybe that's the word. Then the second thing I want us to talk about is, if we are looking for a new model for global cooperation or multilateralism, can we find out what happened with the old one? We are jumping to a new model. We haven't asked what didn't work with the one we had before. So in my organization, I can speak to it. The first question that I try to say is, okay, what is it that is not working? And our members know because they are the ones making the criticisms, whether it's the US, I always tell people that criticisms, but please listen, maybe you don't like the salute, but their criticisms have a lot of validity. Developing countries criticize the system as well, saying it hasn't done as well for them. They don't feel well integrated. Let's listen. Emerging markets. Then we find out what is it that has not worked. Because before we move to a new way of cooperating with each other, we've got to not fall into the trap of doing it the old way.

And what do you think the?

Answer to that is? So the answer to for me.

What's not worked, yeah.

What's not worked, and I'll talk about trade, is that the world has changed substantially in terms of the balance of economic power, the shares of GDP. the trade, let's take trade from in 1995, we've moved from low, low, low, low, middle income countries, lower and low middle income countries controlling. Let me start again, low and middle income countries controlling about 23% of world trade. It's now about 45%. I think in 1995, we had a situation where perhaps developed countries controlled about 60% of global GDP and developing 40. This has reversed.

Yeah.

So there's a shift in economic shares. That's one. There's a shift in technology that has happened, and it's changing very fast. It's not only AI. We've had changes in technology that have happened with the internet and availability of mobile phones. There are so many shifts happening. There's a demographic shift where the developed countries, many of them, and some emerging markets have an aging population. And you have younger populations in some of the developing world. So I could go on, but there are four or five major shifts happening in the world. And, but the systems we have and the organizations and it's have not changed in a way that recognizes those shifts. So, so let me end with my own, coming to my own organization. The important thing is to recognize how have these shifts affected us? What has worked? If you look at trade, even though I say that, that low and middle income countries are now control uh um a greater part of trade South South trade is also increased okay but still within that there are some parts of the South if you want to call it who have not benefited as much Africa's share of global trade has remained at below 2% for almost two Dec at 3% sorry for almost two decades how are we going to so of course they are not as warm about the impact of the global trading system. How do we reform that? What rules do we need to look at to make sure that this changes?

So can I take just one specific one? So you say there'd be massive shifts. The one that's obvious thing to everyone, wherever you live in the world, is technology. So when you look at an organization like WTO, it was not built to deal with massive imbalances in technological power. How would an organization like that tackle that problem?

I think there are two ways. It's clear to me that in the existing agreements that were made before these shifts took place. So you've got to take some of our agreements and look at them and say, are they fit for purpose now? How do we amend or change them? Let's take the agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures made 30 years plus ago, which did not take account of green subsidies and, you know, things you might need. So there's a gap. I'm just using that as one example. It also does not take account of different kinds of state subsidies, because different kinds of economies were not part of the system at that time. They became part of the system. They were seeing the view in the subsidies in a slightly different light, or a very different light, I should say. Should we now look at this and say, are the subsidies recognized here? And the exceptions made for using them still fit for purpose, or do we need to do something to change those? That's one kind of example.

Okay, let's come back to that, but let's use that as a framing that I guess we will come back to. Fundamental shifts that are happening in global society and economy and the institutions.

Sorry, James, I'll just add one thing before you go away. My last point is, let us also take account of what works in the system. So what works, what doesn't work, what are the new opportunities not seized, the gaps?

Yeah, thank you. I think we can all agree that actually everyone's behaving really well on the timekeeping other than me. So I will try and be a little more disciplined, I'm sorry. Pascale Grootenquist, you're in charge of International Development Cooperation for the Netherlands. So I mean, this is the day job, thinking about the new multilateralism, how do you think of it?

Yeah, it's actually really, I would say funny, but it's not funny, but I actually wanted to thank also the coalition for having this conversation, because actually my daily life is running after crisis, after crisis, after crisis, and not taking the time to think about it. We asked an advisory committee on international policy to draft an advice on how the future of development cooperation or international development, whatever you would like, and global cooperation is also a beautiful language. should look like because we are running from crisis to crisis and I think actually probably 80% of this room is doing that and UNGA is like speed dating on steroids. So it's, I think it's actually really good to have this conversation on the future of internationalism. I agree very much that the world has changed since the multilateral system was built and it was built in a very different time, in very different power relations, in very different trade relations and the world has become more complex and complex and complex. And sometimes, and it's not possible because we have this system and many of the system things actually really work, but sometimes I feel that we have to define, I don't know, five problems or challenges or however we think about it, and then see if we have the system in place to to battle them, whether it's climate, whether it's trade, whether it's human rights, whether it's the humanitarian context. And I sometimes think also that everybody here moves in the same circles. And sometimes it feels like a bubble that we need to burst open to include other people, private sector, NGOs, I don't know, charity, bankers, because actually, If you look at the multilateral system, it's banks should be very much interested, insurance companies as well, because this is about stability, it's about predictability, it's about preventing pandemics. So I sometimes feel that we should have a more inclusive system in all different layers of the word inclusive.

Because that private sector multilateralism is actually happening.

It is, but it's happening in silos again. And insurance companies, we have pension funds looking very much in all kind of investments in global challenges, but it's in silos. So one is looking in health, one is looking in climate, and actually climate and health are very much related. So sometimes, and it's not with disrespect, but sometimes I think we should go back to the drawing board and maybe see what are the five immense challenges and how can we work to its stats.

Neil Richmond, you're the Minister of State for Development in Ireland. Back to the drawing board, what would you do?

We're in very dangerous territory here of a room full of people agreeing with each other. And I can't take away from anything that the speakers have said before. And when we think about going back to the drawing board, we think about, well, who are we going back to the drawing for? So I'm a career politician. I've been elected for the last 17 years. Every couple of years, I have to go back to the electorate in the main streets of South Dublin that former President Robinson knows well. Not exactly the toughest constituency, but I have to justify why I've just spent a week in New York. I have to justify what does the term multilateralism mean? What do global partnerships mean? What do What does cooperation mean for the person who will come into my constituency clinic or surgery, whatever you want to call it, or the person, to be quite frank, who's sitting at the end of next week going, I can't afford this bill. I can't fill my car. I can't afford my weekly shop. I don't know if I can afford new clothes for my kids. And this is very much in the global north. This is in a rich country that is Ireland. And if I go and turn to them and go, look, but the conversations I was having, at United Nations General Assembly high level week really matter, they go, "Are you for real?" And I think this is the big challenge, but how I'd see it is actually the opportunity. Never waste a crisis. There's a crisis of confidence in the global order, the global system, but all the big issues that people have dedicated their lives so brilliantly working on, the climate emergency-- Hold.

On one second, I'm just gonna, someone's phone is going, it'll be very possibly mine, but it's not, so no one, so it is, okay, fine.

I can confirm that it's not mine.

Okay. I'm going to make sure it's going. I'm just going to stop this one second. It's not yours. There it is. Sorry, forgive me. Forgive me. That is sort of. This is the new model. In my family, our favorite app, when someone asked us what our favorite app was, it was called Find My iPhone. Thank you, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is global cooperation at work. By the way, who says multilateralism doesn't work? Something actually happened. We really achieved something. Can I, but actually, Neil, can I just do something just to go back to your point? Because I think you're on something really important here, which is what is the truth of what the public really wants in terms of global cooperation? Because if you look at the polling, it seems to say something different from what the politicians are telling us. The polling says actually there's quite a high level of support, 60 plus percent for multilateralism and particularly high levels around peacekeeping. So will you talk about the difference between what the polling says and perhaps what you hear on the doorstep or what you have to prove on the doorstep?

The point I make is what I hear in the doorstep is actually just people describing the big global issues that we talk about, but in the granular form. And perhaps we've taken too far a step back from the granular form and we get lost in the systems and we get lost in the institutions, we get lost in the acronyms and the terminology and we speak a language that is alien. Because ultimately, when we're talking about the climate emergency, we are talking about people who cannot heat their homes this winter. We are talking about people who do not have any other option but to use a private car, and they can't use the private car. The same way when we talk about climate emergency in the global south, we're talking about crops failing, we're talking about drought. I go and tell people El Nino is having a devastating effect. They ask me, which team does he play for? And that's not to be glib or wise about it. Rather, it's actually to say, look, let's meet people where we're at. If we're going to sell the power of multilateralism, global cooperation, partnership, whatever term you want to use, look at what has been succeeded. And let's not be defeatist. The progress that's been made over the last 25 years in terms of reducing poverty, in terms of building up health systems, has been immense. But we can modernise it, we can reform it, but we have to do it in a manner of looking beyond, beyond this studio, beyond the debates and the chambers that we're in this week.

And can I just ask you, so I appreciate the point about language, speaking in a way that people don't understand, but there are, there were lots of people who would also say to you, no, look, I've seen what's been happening in Gaza, I see what's happening in Ukraine, I see what's happening in Sudan, I see really, really acute global conflicts that, that they look to places with hope and belief like the UN, and the UN seems unable to bring peace, and they think the system's not working. So there's a substance point as well as a language point, isn't there?

There is a substance point and we have to be able to own the failures, or maybe failure might be too strong a term. We have to be able to own where we haven't delivered as much as people want, because perhaps in some regards they want it delivered in 160 characters on social media. Maybe that's the challenge. How do we combat the misinformation and disinformation, not just with legislation and policy and frameworks, but actually pushing back and say, hold on, if it wasn't for the United Nations, we can name 10 regions where there wouldn't be peace. If it wasn't for the work of any agency and you choose any agency and you can point to real examples of people's lives and livelihoods are better in every single country in the world not just the global South as we talk about it but when we talk about the very real crises I look at the three biggest issues that come up consistently for the last 18 months in Ireland in terms of opinion polling in terms of concern number one cost of living number two housing and number three um migration All three stem from global instability, and all three can be improved. I want to choose that word very drastically, because it's not about sorting a certain issue. It's about adapting to it. It's about responding to it. It's about making sure that the impact those three things have on people's lives are positive, that we're actually building more homes, that we're making places more affordable, that we're making sure that migration meets the needs of those migrating as well as those receiving.

Thank you. Alexia, will you talk to us a little bit about the work of the coalition, but specifically this, I'm sure lots of people saw the piece by Presidents Ruto and Lula and Prime Minister Carney. Is this a moment for a big new rethink, partners for multilateralism, or is it, as Pascal says, really a moment where we're going to go from crisis to crisis and through that we're going to build a new idea of what multilateralism is?

Probably both, James, because we need to reimagine and rethink, but we need to do that by doing and by solving real problems in real time. We can't be sort of an academic exercise. So I think it's both. And I was reflecting on Ngozi's global cooperation point. And my sense, and as I travel the world, it's confirmed that actually the future of global cooperation is bright. Certainly the people to people. is more interconnected and more international than ever before. I just witnessed the Deputy Prime Minister of Somalia speak perfect Hindi to Kalpana here from Gates. It's an anecdote, but it's true. Business to business. absolutely internationalized. And I think we're going through a turbulence now when it's with state actors. So we are going through a turbulence. And the question is, you know, will we abandon the plane or will we steer the plane and land well, even though we're going through turbulence? And I think that's entirely within our agency and our ability to act.

And do you think, do you think the way so so when sort of people get around your tables and and thinking about are they talking about, okay, we need to fundamentally remake the architecture in the way Ngozi said, or they're saying we just need to commit to the architecture we've got.

I think they don't often use the word architecture. Yeah, no, no, no, because it's actually we over focus maybe on institutions. I think what we talk about is trust. What we talk about is power. What we talk about is, you know what, an invitation to a table that's far from us that we have not helped build. whose wood we have never seen before, and whose linen and food we don't understand, and then we're supposed to be happy to be invited to the table, those days are over. That's what we hear. We want to help build that table. We want to shape the table. We want to choose the linen together. Ngezi also asked, what have we done wrong? What we've done wrong has been really proud to say, now we're more inclusive. Please do come to my table, but don't you dare change a rule. That's not going to work.

Make new and different tables. Hussein, do you want to weigh on this? And tell us, just from ServiceNow's point of view, how you think about this. And I suppose building on that, just how you make a different kind of multilateralism that invites people in to make it rather than participate in it.

Great question. Look, let me first start out by saying that innovation and governance are inseparable. And if we contextualize this moment in history, You can think about moments like the Clean Air Act in the United States because industry failed to regulate its own pollution. You could think about the GDPR in Europe because industry failed to respect people's privacy rights. And I think the fundamental thing that we have to step back on and think about is that governance is not a detractor to innovation. It can actually accelerate innovation if it's built in by design. what happens is, you know, governance kicks in, usually by a sovereign entity, because there's a vacuum of trust. And that's what's happening with AI today. So what's happening is that people are now pivoting from what AI can do for you to what AI can do to you. And that lack of trust and lack of the ability of industry to get together first and self-govern. is adding to the need for multi...

But can I just ask you, I think a lot of people would say that sounds great, but government on a national level has always been two steps behind technology and innovation, and on a multilateral level, four steps behind. You know, coordinating at a government level is just unbelievably hard. So why will it be different this time?

I'm not saying we should do it just at the government level. I'm actually advocating for a public and private sector collaboration.

Oh, I see, sorry.

Because you're 100% right. I was at breakfast here this morning and we're talking about how it might take two years to put a plan in place while AI models are changing every two hours. And I think that the dialogue, the convening capabilities of organizations like the United Nations to bring us together and drive that accountability early when we're at the design stage as opposed to after the fact is profound. And that's one of the things that I'm here for that reason, because I think that we need to lead by example. We need to build that governance into our systems, we need to have accountability for the technology. The example I use is in my entire life and 30 years of practice as a lawyer, so my background is as a lawyer, lawyers govern themselves. We have bar associations, we have rules of ethics, they have teeth. You can get kicked out. You can lose your permission to practice if you violate those laws. And I think our industry as a whole needs to first think about implementing things beyond just aspirational ethical rules into actionable consequences. And then work with governments, first at what I would say the national level and then the international level. What is challenging for tech companies is when you have a patchwork of regulation. Yeah. If you can get that multilateral action around building a consistent set of rules that become standards and standards make it so that we can build to a common goal. And I think for us, the common goal here is that AI and technology has to be in service of people.

Yeah. Okay. Also, like a clarity, the clarity of outcome there is really clear. David Miliband, very nice to see you. The question we're trying to sort of wrap our heads around collectively is What is the new multilateralism? What will it be? And we kicked off David by saying, rather hopefully, actually maybe we're about to see the renewal of multilateralism. And you've written, as you know, I'm a big fan of what you've written about, the age of impunity. Do you think we are about to see a renewal of multilateralism?

I mean, I think three big things are going on. Thing number one is that this hyper-connected world has more and more global risks. And that makes the case for cooperation. Thing number two is that there's radical dispersal of power from the unipolar world of the 1990s, 2000s, rapid dispersal of political, military, economic power. I mean, we're meeting in the building that really had four policemen after 1945. France lost the war, obviously, was invaded, was occupied, but the four other countries that sustained, so they pledged to be the four policemen. There's no policeman today. So that's the age of impunity. I think the third thing that's going on, obviously, is a massive technological revolution that makes all of the structures that we deal with seem so slow. Now, I don't think we're going to see a resurgence of multilateralism. We're going to see a resurgence of multilateralisms. Plural. And I'm not just trying to make a clever *** point. I'm trying to say that there's not a single new world order that's going to come. There are going to be regional coalitions. There are going to be values-based coalitions. There are going to be issue-based coalitions. And the good thing is, if you think about the successful efforts to achieve international cooperation in the last 30 or 40 years, the Montreal Protocol on CFCs. the Global Fund on TB, AIDS, and malaria, the expansion of the European Union, most recently, the High Seas Treaty, which I'm committed to because of the work I did on the Global Ocean Commission 10 years ago. What do those things have in common? They have in common governments willing to lead and not wait for everyone. Secondly, they have business and NGO innovation because we need to find different ways of doing things. And thirdly, they have mass mobilization around them. Now, the interesting thing is they don't have to be in that order. Sometimes it's the business or NGO innovation that comes first. Sometimes it's the mobilization that's come first. Sometimes the governments come first. And so I think we're going to see multilateralism is growing in a in a patchwork. That's the best hope for international cooperation, in my view.

And can you can you just pick up on Neil's point about the link between if you like, domestic politics, how it feels at home and how the world is changing. Because if you saw that Carney, Lula, Ruto point, it started off by saying we're dealing with a paradox. But actually, it's not such a paradox, is it? The world is globalizing and people are fearful. It's not unsurprising they're retreating. So how do you make the connection, even in the context of regional or issue-based multilateralisms, that get the buy-in of the public into this kind of greater cooperation?

Well, Niels has to win votes for it. So it's easy for me to speak about that. I would say a couple of things about that. First of all, it's important, although you live in London, don't just have a European perspective on this. The Rockefeller Foundation put out some polling data from 34 countries on Monday and it shows that 68% of people in sub-saharan Africa think that international cooperation is going well, which I was astonished by. So I think we've got to, we've got to make sure we don't have a singular point of view. Secondly, I do think there's a link between the case for international cooperation and the reform of international cooperation. What I see is a credibility gap in the claims that international answers will ever deliver. And it seems to me that the injunction or the pressure I feel is that we need to get some wins on the board. We need to define some problems that we're going to tackle. I'm obsessed with the idea that there are 45 million acutely malnourished children in the world today. There's absolutely no reason for that. There's one and a half million women who die in childbirth for want of the most basic not even, it doesn't require a doctor, just hemorrhagic bleeding cost those one and a half million women their lives. There's no reason for that. I think we've got to solve some of these problems to build back confidence, but to solve them, we desperately need to reform the reactive, siloed, splintered international system.

David, thank you. Ronny, can I ask you, I mean, David just talked about regional cooperation. Obviously, what you do with the UN in Western Asia, you are, you know, front and center of that kind of regional cooperation. Does it work?

So the ESCWA, which is the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, is really the 21 member states, the Arab countries. And coalitions of countries working together is what is happening. To have 21 countries agree on everything. So regional integration is a very general world. I would go to coalitions trying to find shared economic benefits. We have connectivity grids, which are extremely important. So when countries want to create growth, want to create jobs, it's very important to pull electricity. It's very important to work together when we have sandstorms that are going to eradicate cultivated land, countries need to work together. So we do have examples. And when we talk about international cooperation, I think we should not generalize. It's not all not working. No, there are things that are working. And I think it's on all of us to try and push the success stories to create more faith in the ability to work together and get somewhere.

And so I didn't introduce you properly, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat. The reason I say that is someone said to me, actually, this is an example of where you're seeing real cooperation, but not on a sort of pan-regional basis, on an issues-based basis. And so will you just talk about the process whereby those issues are chosen? between the participants in the Moscow.

So before taking on this job, I was a minister for eight years in Egypt, and I take country ownership very seriously. When countries know exactly what their objectives are and what they need to do in order to close gaps, fiscal gaps, developing gaps, the different gender or women issues, all of these on a national level are achieving goals, but they also achieve global goals. They avoid unnecessary migration, they decrease the impact of health crises in countries. So what you do on a national level, all of us need to agree that it also contributes to global goals and to global goods, public goods. We had a long discussion in the coalition about global public goods, but that aside. So if there is that conviction that when we as a country, any country, is doing what it should do properly, it's adding to the global situation, then international cooperation, all of us want to help each other to become better.

And Ronny, is David right that the things that Neil was touching upon, the sort of suspicion of global cooperation, global efforts, Would you say it's different in the region? Would you say actually the sub-Saharan numbers that Dave quoted, the 68%, is it closer to that?

Well, rule of thumb, David is always right. So that's one thing that we have to agree on. But I think that's why differentiation is important. Generalization is very difficult. And countries have different initial conditions. hippity countries have benefited from You know the IMF boards coming together and trying to help when you look at the Gates Foundation what they've done over the years and when it comes to also education in in Africa so there are specific, you know examples that we need to to shed light on so I would just say let's not generalize let's always emphasize national good policy because that again adds to a better global situation that all of us want to hopefully live in what's happening in Hormuz and what's happening in the Gulf is affecting purchasing power and affordability in Europe and in the US so Global cooperation is required to be able to solve these problems.

Okay Rona thank you Mary Robinson you're there's a lovely thing on here that says, you know, you're a member of the Elders, you're also Mary Robinson for Pete's sake. So, so, so, so can I just ask you, when you look at the future of this and you think to yourself, okay, we're going to redefine or we're going to take the things that Ron and David and others are talking about, where do you see it going?

Well, first of all, I was terrified you were going to bar me because my phone went off. But I actually think we have to be be aware that profoundly, multilateralism as we know it was built and based on the rule of law, human rights, the charter of the United Nations, and these are the important normative values that are key to multilateralism. Yes, I believe multilateralism also was biased towards the West, especially through the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and so on. Okay, not perfect, but extraordinarily important. Now, what has happened is that some great powers do not like rule of law. They like rule by force, that might is right. And that is why we have such problems in our world, including problems that raise the cost of living. It's the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. You know, we've had two aggressive illegal wars by great powers, Russia invading Ukraine, the United States together with Israel illegally invading Iran. And that has resulted in the close of the Strait of Hormuz, and that has led to fossil fuel based higher prices. We are not dealing with the other crises in our world. There are two other crises that are huge. the crisis of inequality, and that crisis is now corroding the democracy that's at the root of our multilateralism. Money is buying votes, buying power, not just here in the United States, and it's doing it or trying to do it here in the United States, but in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Large whether it's cryptocurrency or other currency, buying and undermining democracy. And then we have a world that is totally failing to appreciate and deal with the climate and nature crisis. And that's the one that I spend most of my time focused on and worrying about. I happen to be a guardian of the planetary boundaries. My three youngest grandchildren are so impressed that granny-- And you're a planetary guardian. But the point is, it's the holistic way in which the ecosystems that sustain us, the ozone layer was mentioned earlier, that we retrieved through the Montreal Protocol, but actually we're in breach of seven. of the nine planetary boundaries. It is absolutely crisis time. And yet our politicians are not in crisis. It slipped down the agenda because they're distracted by too many problems.

First, Mary, I like that.

And then there's AI.

We'll have to bring that in too. First, I'd like to say I like the thought of you as our very own Mandalorian. That's a very nice thought. But can I just ask you, so you are speaking into the teeth of this whole issue, right? And on the on the war front, on inequality, on climate, the Secretary General of the UN positioned multilateralism, if you like, as having a comeback moment, the argument that the limits of that rule by force, the limits of that power becoming clear. Do you buy that or is that wishful thinking?

I actually do think, and this is the good news, that we are seeing, and I think some people have been describing it in different ways, the way I describe it is diverse and multilayered examples of multilateralism, middle powers moving forward because the big powers are not at the table, whether it's in climate, for example, Brazil, when we couldn't get the words phasing out fossil fuel or transitioning from fossil fuel into COP30 in Belem. initiated two roadmaps to deal with two problems, one to get the phasing out of fossil fuel and the other to get no deforestation. I took part in Santa Marta, where 59 countries came together. It was really remarkable, much, much better than COPs, because people were actually cooperating under Netherlands and Colombia. cooperating together. And so many of the delegates that I know so well kept saying to me, isn't it nice to be friends together and working together on these problems? And now we're going to have a COP coming up in Turkey. Will any of that wear off, I wonder? I doubt it.

Can we just talk for a minute about money? Because it's all very well to have big ideas about multilateralism, but it needs the money. And I was struck listening to Deputy Prime Minister Salah Jama when we started talking about the resources that are just not there anymore. or, you know, from Ochoa's point of view, and when you look about the sort of humanitarian position in the world, we're just seeing a multilateralism that's not resourced.

Thank you. I'll start with Ngozi's initial question, what works? And I think it's important, and I think David's data point on what the Rockefeller Foundation found has been a reflection of what I have. I've been in New York for 23 days, I took my new job, so I'm very new here, I've been in the field for 15 years. And especially when it comes to humanitarian assistance and response, when you ask people, what does the UN represent for you? And I'm not talking about the political circles, the elites, but people who see the UN's response, be it humanitarian or NGOs response. It represents the idea that you're not alone in its basic construction. It means 193 countries are with you in responding from the disaster you may be facing, the challenges you may be having, the earthquakes you've experienced. So it's really important to deduce it at that level, that the presence of the UN in the field is an expression of commitment of 193 countries to tell communities in those countries that you're not alone. And when we explain it that way, it has a very different impact in how people see these institutions. So that part works, people see it. They see how we respond now. When you ask about multilateralism, there's so many bits in the basket, right? If you look at the trade part, you may say that part is, you know, we are going through headache. This peace and security part, people are frustrated. Why can't we solve the conflict of Gaza? But let's not throw everything out. The humanitarian part works. It's not well funded. And we know we are targeting this year 87 million people that need life-saving interventions. only 23 billion needed, but we've only been able to raise not anywhere close to where we need to go.

So what's the gap?

I think that the gap now we have about 14, close to 14 billion and the gap for this year and we're already in September. So there is a huge gap already that exists. But allow me to be a little provocative. So the argument in terms of the international system is this. those who have designed the table don't want to redesign it, essentially. I'm rephrasing your point. And that's true. But when it comes to voluntary contribution, that has not changed either. Those who are coming are becoming a new power and not contributing as much as they should. So there's also that part that needs to be discussed. If you look at the contribution to humanitarian assistance, same group of small countries, small number of countries. So Responsibility goes both ways.

So, you're going to make the point about the fundamental shift in global trade and global economic power, but it hasn't happened in humanitarian assistance.

No, it's the same group of countries that contribute all the time. And when they cut, we complain, and rightly so, but where are the middle powers? Where are the new emerging countries in contributing to humanitarian assistance? Because this is everybody's business, it's our shared humanity, and this is the other argument we need to make not focus only on the political part, Security Council part, which is extremely important, that needs a representational change, but we also have to talk about financing, which that hasn't changed either.

Melanie, Hui, will you take the mic? I mean, Luminate, you sit kind of in the middle of actually a lot of the worlds that Alexia and Rania and Pascal were talking about, where there is public-private. Do you think that there is a multilateralism that's emerging, it's just not necessarily within the institutions we've always thought of.

Well, when I think of what's needed in international cooperation, I think it's also about understanding, like you said, the different actors and understanding the different superpowers, if you will, that they have. International organizations, as you said, work on these humanitarian assistance work at scale. Governments have the scale over populations. And philanthropy, which is the organization that I run works on, can provide risk capital. And so I think of the issue that we work on is really the intersection of technology and all the issues that we're facing in the world today. And the digital revolution that you spoke about earlier needs obviously global governance. But in the meantime, how do we de-risk things as philanthropy working with civil society and others to de-risk things that are politically difficult right now? I have a few examples from the work we do. In the UK, for example, supporting a person who challenged surveillance capitalism and enforcing those laws that exist, the good laws that exist in the UK. In Brazil, working with civil society actors that can help create examples for what a good online child safety is. And the digital is an excellent version of a child safety regulation. And trying those things and getting in the mess of it is part of what philanthropy backing civil society can do. I think it's a distinctive role that we can play and I characterize it as the early, spicy, messy stuff.

But it's also similar to what Mary was talking about, isn't it? It's where people choose to come in, you know, it's the Santa Marta spirit where you choose to come in rather than like the full 193. Presumably that's part of what civil society can do. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, Mary.

It's more than that. It's responding to crises. Take what happened over the weekend. We had middle power governments, including yours, signing up very quickly to a call to action on AI because it's There's such a risk about it and calling for three things. That's what I mean about, you know, there are multi-layers of this and some of them involve business, mayors of cities, civil society, philanthropy, et cetera, and some are pure government, and this is pure government. The Elders were delighted. We had just issued principles about a, and we were saying, the governments have to come in on this, and they did.

So I should say that by some miracle, all or an example of global cooperation. All of our key speakers have spoken within that key 45 minutes, which means we have 10 minutes more to discuss amongst ourselves before I hand over to Arantxa, who is going to, in some miraculous way, distill all of this into a version of future multilateralism. Is there anyone, Robert, do take a mic. And by the way, if anyone wants to come back on anything that anyone else has said, sorry, I just.

Really wanted to Two points overall. One is, I think we have to acknowledge we're in a period of sustained scarcity. The security budgets, but also when you look at Western capitals, deficit and debt, it's not like in the 1990s where there wasn't the will, but there was the ability to finance more, which is on the 2000s. I think we'll be underfinanced for the next decade. so it forces us to be much better. It forces us to shift from the symptoms to the causes. It forces us to go from activities to outcomes. And I think it forces us to not just try to be good, but to ensure we're the best. And if we're not the best, to get out of the way so those who are the best can really make a difference. And I think we can debate it a lot in the capitals, but I think it'll be proved in practice in the fields. And so I think we'll see it in places that are at the coal front of these challenges, like a place I'm very involved in now, Haiti, where we're seeing there is a small coalition of the committed and the capable trying to rethink this. And we're seeing as northern countries step back, we're seeing southern countries, whether it's the Chads, the Cote d'Ivoire, the Sri Lankas on the peacekeeping, or the Qatars and others with financial support starting to play a role. And I think because we're forced to be innovative, We may be able to do in places like Haiti what was done in the Sri Lankas in the 2000s. We'll show there's new ways of multilateral cooperation. And again, in Haiti, this is a place where the UN... and the United States and hemisphere actors are coordinating like never before because they have to. So I think this moment may also be an opportunity for us to prove in the field in these tough, fragile, and conflict-affected states that we can work better.

Okay, Robert, thank you. So, there's a mic, or, thank you, Anna. So, would you just introduce yourself, sorry.

Sorry, my name's Rich Wilson from the Foundation. is precisely correct and we're clearly from an innovation perspective we're in that phase of reimagining how to do global cooperation and then I think in some ways we need to see as that phase of experimentation and the experimentation that we're really deep in is with two years ago we launched the global citizens assembly at the UN summit of the future there is this movement of global participation providing politicians and business with legitimacy to take action when they can't I spent last week in San Francisco talking to the bosses of the AI labs. They want to be regulated, they want to be regulated quickly, and so they've come to us, say, can you set up a global citizens assembly to provide a rapid regulation and legitimacy to feedback on our questions because governments are not being able to do it quickly enough. So that's just one layer in the multilateralism. And I think that's, so there's an interesting emerging tie in together. So what is the role of the UN? Is it about, you know, member states dialogue, or is it about about tying together the more new multilateralisms and recognizing the truth of how the world is actually being governed. Like, where does the Belt and Road actually fit in? Where do the citizens dialogues actually fit in? What's being effective? And frankly, what I worry about in some of the UN spaces is many communities, indigenous groups coming into like the pre-COP conversations, they feel like they're using their valuable resources to shout into thin air. I worry when I'm there. So I think we need to be honest about these UN fora to ensure we're using our valuable civic energy and time and resources in a way that is meaningful and connected to real power? Because I do think sometimes these spaces are talk shops and we really need to disavow ourselves of the illusion of that.

Thank you, Rich. Sotoudeh, one word and then I'm going to hand over to Arantxa.

You know, I just...

It's on.

Become a defender of multilateralism for a change. I often travel to global platforms and I run into, you know, familiar faces like David, Alexia, and many others here. And I must admit that I go back with a sense of optimism. We often focus on institutions, systems, and their failure. But there are two elements we undermine, and I just walked for six kilometers from somewhere in New York where I was attending an IFAD summit organized by Global Citizenship Coalition. I didn't even know much about them, but I could see a lot of volunteers and average normal people trying to change the world. So two things we should never forget about is the role of the average person and the role of values carried by that people. But we must also remember it took certain class of politicians to inspire people in the previous era, to instill a certain level of global values, which are innate in everybody to save a dying mother or a child. Everybody would like to do that. But contemporary politics is becoming more divisive and less value-based. So as somebody from Somalia, I mean, the gentleman who is the deputy of OCHA is from Somalia. And usually we think of people, some people we think of Somalis as people who are there to be rescued by Archer. The former head of the International Court of Justice was from Somalia. So if we invest in people, they can also have a ripple effect on people. And I understand the global economy has changed. And you go to, who are the number one tourists in the world? Nowadays, they're not mostly from the Western world, and you know where they're from. The world has changed now. The world has evolved to different regions. So I think we in Africa have a lot to do. One thing I would like to bring to the attention of our members here is before, it took others to calculate what Somalia needs in terms of investment in health, in terms of education. But now we're doing that on our own, we're doing the thinking. And maybe we need an element of blended financing to bring about transformational change. So we are not as pessimistic as we might sound sometimes.

So, Jerome, that's a very, very nice note to end on. If you want to know what journalism is like, what tends to happen is you have a conversation like this in an editorial conference, and then you turn to someone and say, that's great, now what do we actually think? And so it's really nice to be able to turn to Arantxa Gonzalez-Lea. I've never had to do this before, turn to a former foreign minister and say, actually, by the way, I imagine that's what the dean of Science Po, that is your actual job, is to tell us what we actually think.

All right, James, let me try to, in a way, make sense of all these threats we've heard today. We've heard a lot about power, how power is more diffused than it used to be, how the power of technology is moving faster than our ability to regulate it, how we now have private actors that have more power than states. and how there are many more actors out there that are powerful to find solutions to our problems, from cities to civil society, to scientists, to businesses. So this is the world that needs to find a new form of international cooperation. And the good news is that the spirit of international cooperation is pretty much alive. And I like a lot what I've heard in terms of it's the only game in town. For many countries, for many citizens, for many actors, this is the only way to go. Now, how do we adjust this international cooperation to this change power world? That's, in my view, the key question. So what I've heard is, let's think in terms of ecosystems. And in these ecosystems, let's make sure we ensure more representativity without going into fragmentation. So let's have more ecosystems, but without fragmenting those systems. The second thing I've heard is let's ensure there is more representativity without compromising efficiency. So let's give many, bring many more voices around the table, but let's keep the ultimate goal, which is efficiency in solving problems. The third thing I've heard is let's work much more on anticipatory solutions, rather than curing after the disaster has hit, so if I had to sum up what I've heard, James, is… Maybe we need less white collar architects of international cooperation. Maybe we need more blue collar plumbers, carpenters, electricians of international cooperation, those that will help us build solutions that will give us a sense and will give us trust that international cooperation is working to bring us solutions. How was that?

Fantastic. By the way, I would also like to say, well done me, because every time I come to the UN, I get immensely emotional. I get incredibly emotional 'cause this place is so stubbornly hopeful. You can't get over how optimistic it is. And that conclusion there was stubbornly and in a granular way, hopeful. So thank you, Arunja. On that note, I'm gonna invite Kate Garvey, who's the founder and chair of Project Everyone to come and just bring it all together. Kate.

Thank you, James. was incredible. I only really have thank yous to say, and James, I'm going to start with you. Well done. You did cry, but you delivered. It was brilliant. And James and the Observer team, Kate and everyone, thank you so much. I want to thank Alexia. What a force. When we decided to do this after spending some time together in private rooms, I didn't quite understand what a driver you are. You are amazing. Thank you. And the coalition, the whole team, brilliant. Anne-Marie and the SDG lounge, sorry, the goals lounge now rebranded, is brilliant. You're always brilliant. Thank you for letting us do this. And the Project Everyone team, Hannah Cameron, what a star. Thank you for everything. We do want, I think we've maybe proved, proven that it reminded me of a show called "Pointless" in the UK, but the equal and opposite. You might be Alexander, you might be Richard Osman, but it's the opposite. This has a point and we need to do this again. We need to get these messages out there and they can be hopeful, that's okay, but more people need to engage. So if you have enjoyed this, if you'd like to do more of them, talk to myself, Hannah, James, Kate, we're up for this. need to take it to other venues, other moments, but for now, well done, thank you speakers. David rode on a lime bike here, you're here safely, that was impressive. You've all had to sort of... I noticed this, you're all wearing trainers, absolutely brilliant for a UN week to get together like this, thank you Deputy Prime Minister, thank you everyone, brilliant.

Thank you Kate.