“THE UNITED NATIONS was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” This phrase, invoked often by Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s second secretary-general, is as realistic a description today of what the organisation can and cannot do as it was in the mid-1950s. The next secretary-general, its tenth, will need to be equally realistic about the world as it is and the role the UN can play. That will mean doing
“THE UNITED NATIONS was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” This phrase, invoked often by Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s second secretary-general, is as realistic a description today of what the organisation can and cannot do as it was in the mid-1950s. The next secretary-general, its tenth, will need to be equally realistic about the world as it is and the role the UN can play. That will mean doing less, better.
As a candidate for the position, I am not an idealist who thinks goodwill and declarations can resolve disagreements between states. Nor am I a technocrat looking for the perfect organisation chart to restore the UN’s relevance. I am an optimistic realist. After 40 years in diplomacy and leading international organisations, I understand that the tension between might and right never disappears, but nor does the need for multilateralism and a UN that works.
The next secretary-general will have to deal with a world of competing powers and conflict in which the UN and sometimes multilateralism itself have been sidelined. Understandings and agreements that once existed among major powers—imperfect, but real as they were—have fractured. I saw this in the case of Iran. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council used to broadly agree on a common approach to dealing with ongoing questions about the nature of its nuclear programme. Not anymore.
Deep Dive
Why is the UN facing a crisis of confidence today?
How can the next UN secretary-general restore trust in multilateralism?
What should the UN focus on to become more effective?
Those who say this makes the UN and multilateralism dispensable are forgetting history. The organisation’s founders did not imagine a world without rivalry and national interest. They had just lived through the most destructive expression of those forces. Their achievement was to create a framework in which politics could be managed without returning to catastrophe. Today, shared vulnerability—to escalation, nuclear and other technological risks, pandemics, natural disasters, and economic and political collapse—remains the most durable foundation for co-operation, even among adversaries.
In a world of interconnection, instant communication and disinformation, instability quickly spreads. Conflicts cause immense suffering; they disrupt energy markets, trade and confidence in the world economy.
The UN comprises everyone, including the countries most exposed to economic exclusion and institutional fragility. That is a benefit to all, even the powerful, because development, human rights and humanitarian assistance are not secondary concerns. They are core to the UN’s mission, and crucial to preventing destabilising cycles of failure.
But the UN is facing a crisis of confidence. Its future will be decided by whether the next secretary-general can work with member states to make the institution more useful again.
As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, I have balanced harnessing the power of nuclear science to support health, energy and other sectors with ensuring that nuclear is safe, secure and used for peaceful purposes. The IAEA has helped developing countries fight cancer, forging partnerships with the private sector and now working with more than 100 countries to bring radiotherapy to millions of people without access. On the energy-security front, the agency has partnered with the World Bank to support the responsible use of nuclear power for development—the first concrete step after a change of policy at the bank, which has not financed a nuclear power project since 1959.
In hotspots around the world, the IAEA is responding to new challenges and new opportunities. My negotiations with President Vladimir Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky made possible the establishment of the agency’s continuous presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, on the front line of the war, and at the other nuclear power plants throughout Ukraine. Last month my safeguards team and I visited Deir ez-Zor, a site in Syria that the IAEA had judged very likely to have been a secret nuclear reactor. The new government has agreed to grant our inspectors access, and we have finally resolved the safeguards issues stemming from the country’s past nuclear activities. Meanwhile, we continue to engage with Iran and others to support an agreement to ensure that nuclear weapons will not be developed there.
Multilateralism is a practice. It means building relationships, reacting to unprecedented situations and showing up in communities in need and on battlefields under gunfire.
The UN has achieved remarkable things: it oversaw the decolonisation of more than 80 countries comprising 750m people; it eradicated smallpox; it saved the ozone layer; it feeds more than 100m people a year in emergencies; and it wrote the standards for aircraft, shipping, radio spectrum and food safety that are applied across borders every day.
But after decades of unchecked mandate proliferation, showing too little impact for the resources it demands, the UN needs a reset. Rather than being everything to everyone, it should do fewer things. It should set clearer priorities, focusing on prevention and the interconnectedness of its three foundational pillars: peace and security, human rights and development. While continuing to collaborate with partners such as regional organisations and development banks, it should leave to them what they can do better.
The secretary-general must build the credibility and relationships to bring leaders back to the UN and the UN back into the arena. That means being a skilled and impartial broker at the negotiating table; keeping doors open; reducing risks of miscalculation; and building off-ramps from which belligerents eventually exit conflicts. History shows it can be done, even in deeply divided times.
Realism about the nature of power, the world as it is and the role of the UN is the foundation on which to show up and deliver with principled optimism. The UN’s founders understood it. Eighty years later, it needs a secretary-general who can act on it.
Rafael Mariano Grossi is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Read the guest essay by Rebeca Grynspan, another candidate for UN secretary-general
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