A spanner in the works for Guterres' UN legacy

Gunnar Larson g at xny.io
Tue May 30 06:55:26 PDT 2023


Sometimes the best-laid plans and intentions don’t work out quite as
expected. That’s the case with Guterres’ attempt to codify his blueprint
for the organization that would map out its mission for the next 250 years
and cement the Portuguese leader’s personal legacy.

His proposed Summit of the Future has been kicked into the weeds, writes my
colleague Colum Lynch. Guterres had hoped to cap off 2023 with a summit of
world leaders to “forge a new global consensus on what our future should
look like, and how we can secure it.”

But a coalition of lower- and middle-income countries have thrown a wrench
into proceedings, pressing to halt the event’s preparations until next year
and contending that the United Nations must focus this year on implementing
its existing (and faltering) development goals, according to U.N. diplomats
and internal U.N. documents that Colum saw exclusively.

The dispute constitutes a critical test for Guterres’ ability to overcome
the kind of diplomatic paralysis that has thwarted previous U.N. leaders
from modernizing a world body whose basic structures were forged at the
close of World War II, when the greatest threats to humanity, including
climate change, were largely unknown; social media and artificial
intelligence were no more than intellectual constructs; and many of today’s
governments didn’t even exist.

https://pages.devex.com/index.php/email/emailWebview?mkt_tok=Njg1LUtCTC03NjUAAAGMC0zHKyeA_3TFCx45IDK7qNe43qT6ONwlHB2E5Lh2U04kPiZHHqnhX4nk_t-lASP1L7WrkZTKw5Cvu9EgbvV7lIz7JFnPE3jGqrNn0RAtG7Pk5o0&md_id=79014
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