The Multilateral Transit.

Twenty months into multilateral work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the midpoint of a global COVID pandemic, the single greatest destroyer of prosperity in our time and the force that will define the next decade through the inequality it leaves behind, I find it worth articulating why multilateralism still matters and why it is worth defending.

I am extraordinarily honored by the invitation, and above all the trust, that Undersecretary Martha Delgado placed in me to join her team and help turn so many aspirations for a better world into reality.

The multilateral system is built around generating dialogue among multiple actors (nation-states) to create spaces for agreement and shared understanding. The process of reaching those agreements and building global consensus takes time to mature; it operates at a pace far removed from immediate solutions. Examples exist across virtually every domain, from disarmament to negotiations over corporate rights. The platform exists and is capable of producing agreements, but its operating cycles lag well behind the pace that global challenges now demand.

The critique of the multilateral system rests on its apparent inability to demonstrate its own utility to the global community of nations. My counterargument is that the architecture is both necessary and useful. Rather than calling for wholesale reform, I would argue that sharpening the focus of global agencies can generate meaningful levels of prosperity and equitable development for humanity. The issue is not that these institutions fail to function, but that the enormous human and national capital invested in them needs to be channeled more decisively toward concrete solutions.

I understand clearly that the purpose of the multilateral system is to build benefits for humanity in the broadest possible sense, with far greater cooperation than any bilateral arrangement allows. It is also worth remembering that multilateral timelines, involving more actors than bilateral ones, are inherently more complex and therefore slower to reach maturity.

UN system agencies have the accumulated experience, knowledge, and capacity to produce lasting change in host countries, on request. The particular case of UNDP, which for decades has supported efforts toward greater equity and equality through development projects, stands as a major success story. Similarly valuable are the normative frameworks and fieldwork of UN-Habitat, which help societies confront the challenges of human settlement from a territorial perspective. Perhaps the central challenge, however, is the difficulty that nation-states face in translating agency support into concrete workplans with grounded, measurable applications.

At the global level, the reform of the United Nations envisions coordinating agency activity by country, with the aim of strengthening and making the UN's presence more effective in each setting. That coordination in turn requires strong states capable of defining specific projects that can anchor and leverage the global expertise of the agencies they have invited to operate within their borders. It is this process, more than any other, that holds the greatest potential for changing the lives of people across the world. The vehicle for this process is the UN Cooperation Framework for the host country.

Cooperation frameworks that are genuinely and fully aligned with the needs and priorities set by the host government are what make tangible everything negotiated in multilateral forums and enshrined in the global agreements reached there. The UN system often appears to be a body without grounded outcomes, but I believe this is primarily a communication failure at the global level, driven in large part by insufficient understanding of the significance of the projects the UN advances around the world.

The struggle for a better world means improving the quality of life not only of human beings but of all forms of life we share the planet's biosphere with. The United Nations has the capacity to forge agreements at multiple levels, but more importantly, to support specific projects that make the value of that contribution visible and concrete. Every agency, from its founding mandate, carries particular responsibilities or areas of focus for addressing the complex relationship between human beings and their geography, their home. Yet those agreements do not happen on the initiative of the agencies or the UN system alone; they are the sum of global political will and the local national decisions about what kind of cooperation is being sought.

Multilateralism extends well beyond the UN, but using it as a reference makes it possible to visualize, in concrete terms, how nationally defined problems can be solved. Drawing on globally generated knowledge, developed across many latitudes, to address everything from water resource crises to frameworks for protecting women represents a genuine opportunity for any administration. The effort to apply that knowledge must be concentrated on the specific agenda the administration in question is advancing. National agendas and UN agency engagement are therefore an extraordinary complement for achieving the development objectives that emerge from each country's legitimate democratic processes.

Finally, after these twenty months, my conviction in the multilateral system is renewed by the success of aligning the UN Cooperation Framework, fully and explicitly, with the National Development Plan issued by the current government. Added to this is the understanding that the United Nations and its agencies are useful precisely to the extent that they have concrete projects to carry out. Generating specific project agendas to address the day-to-day challenges a country faces is the strongest source of legitimacy for the decades of work that have gone into defending global multilateralism.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the UN Cooperation Framework and why does it matter?

The UN Cooperation Framework is the document that aligns the work of all UN agencies in a given country with that country's national priorities. When genuinely aligned with the host government's development plan, it translates multilateral agreements into concrete, measurable projects at the national level.

What is the main critique of the multilateral system?

The central criticism is that the multilateral system is too slow and too removed from tangible outcomes to justify the political and financial capital invested in it. The author argues this is largely a communication problem, and that the solution lies in generating specific, visible projects rather than overhauling the architecture.

How can UN agencies like UNDP and UN-Habitat deliver concrete results?

These agencies succeed when host governments define clear, specific project agendas that anchor the agencies' global expertise to local development needs. UNDP's decades of equity-focused development work and UN-Habitat's territorial normative frameworks are cited as proof of concept.