UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres Calls for Reform of ‘Outdated, Dysfunctional, and Unfair’ Global Financial Architecture

Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations (U.N.), has noted changes that need to happen with today’s financial institutions to fit into the current multilateral world. During the recent BRICS leaders summit, Guterres said that the current “outdated, dysfunctional, and unfair” financial system needs to be reformed, including Bretton Woods institutions.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: We Must Urgently Reinvigorate Multilateralism

Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations (U.N.), has called to embrace cooperation and multilateralism, explaining that there was “no choice” as the world becomes more multipolar. At the recent BRICS leaders summit in Johannesburg, Guterres stated that multipolarity was not guaranteed to achieve peace and that more should be done to grow a “global community.”

Guterres blasted the global establishment, stating:

As the global community moves towards multipolarity, we desperately need a strengthened and reformed multilateral architecture based on the U.N. Charter and international law.

Furthermore, Guterres acknowledged current institutions were outdated and answered to a deprecated world configuration, calling for reforms that would “reflect today’s power and economic realities, and not the power and economic realities of the post-Second World War.”

“This is particularly true of the Security Council of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions,” Guterres specified, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in his call for reform.

The U.N. Security Council has been widely criticized as small and ineffective by several scholars consulted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Financial System Reform

Guterres reinforced the need to reform the current financial system as part of what he called “priorities for action and justice.” Nonetheless, he recognized that this is unlikely to happen quickly in today’s geopolitical situation.

Guterres stated:

Redesigning today’s outdated, dysfunctional, and unfair global financial architecture is necessary, but I know it won’t happen overnight. Yet we can – and must – take practical action now.

The BRICS bloc, integrated by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has been moving to create a new alternative financial architecture away from Western traditional power centers and the influence of the U.S. dollar. The BRICS “Johannesburg II Declaration” stressed the need to transact in national currencies and called for the consideration of “the issue of local currencies, payment instruments and platforms” for the next summit that will be held in Kazan.

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