By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
The following are extensive excerpts from the address by the former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations, Ambassador Chowdhury — who founded the Global Movement for the Culture of Peace (GMCoP) — at the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) on the occasion of the 80th anniversary United Nations Day on 24 October 2025.
NEW YORK | 09 November 2025 (IDN) — This year’s United Nations Day holds particular significance – not only because wars and geopolitical tensions are in stark evidence – but also because, as the UN turns eighty, it is a moment to reflect on the future of the global architecture of multilateralism.
My deep appreciation to the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (UN-ANDI) for organising this virtual panel discussion on Implications of the UN80 Initiative and its future directions.
We are told that the UN80 Initiative is a once-in-a-generation opportunity — a moment to re-energise multilateralism, to bring fresh ideas to an organisation that has guided humanity for eight decades. Its publicised objectives are commendable: to make the United Nations fit for the twenty-first century; to restore trust in global governance; to ensure that its institutions respond to the voices of youth, women, and those on the margins of society. These are the slogans of renewal that no one can disagree with.
But beneath this language of “reinvention,” I fear we are witnessing something quite different — a carefully curated exercise in political appeasement and bureaucratic survival. The UN80 process has become less about reform and more about realignment — realignment with the agenda of one or two powerful capitals whose policies run counter to the very principles enshrined in the UN Charter.
UN as a Tool, not a Trust?
We must say it plainly: this initiative is increasingly shaped by the Secretary-General’s need to satisfy the expectations of the powerful Member States and to stay in step with a convoluted agenda that views the United Nations as a tool, not a trust.
We are told that the UN80 Initiative will streamline the UN system, reduce overlap, and make it more “business friendly.” Yet the underlying philosophy is worryingly transactional. It seeks to replace values with metrics, and multilateralism with managed bilateralism disguised as consensus. In the name of efficiency, it risks shrinking the UN’s moral authority into a consulting platform for the powerful. This is not reform — it is reduction.
Worse still, the process is tainted by an implied kowtowing that corrodes credibility from the core. Appointments to panels and commissions bear the fingerprints of political favouritism rather than the mark of merit. Consultations are tightly controlled and stage-managed, with civil society brought in for optics rather than for substantive purposes. Voices from the Global South — those who live the UN’s work each day — find themselves once again on the fringes of a conversation about their own future.
Dag Hammarskjöld once reminded us that “It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
The UN80 Initiative plays it very safe. It avoids speaking truth to power, preferring to appease power itself. It celebrates “public-private partnerships” while failing to ask why the public dimension of multilateralism is withering. It praises “digital innovation” while remaining silent on the digital divide that condemns millions to exclusion. It extols “peace and security” while undermining the equality of women’s participation at the peace tables.
The United Nations was born out of the ashes of war and sustained by the faith that all nations — large and small — could sit as equals at one table. To bend that principle for short-term political convenience is to betray the moral architecture set by the Charter. The UN 80 agenda should have been a clarion call for deepening the Culture of Peace within the system — for placing human security above state security, ethics above expediency, and people above politics. Instead, we are offered a managerial manifesto with a marketing gloss. What a travesty!
UN Is at Its Best When It Empowers the Powerless
If this initiative is truly to renew the United Nations, it must start with introspection — by acknowledging that credibility cannot be purchased through alliances of convenience, and that reform without integrity is merely rhetoric. The reforms initiated under power pressure and forced budgetary crisis, invoking the UN’s milestone 80th anniversary, can only shatter its foundational moorings and critically needed staff morale.
We must remember that the UN is at its best not when it echoes the powerful, but when it empowers the powerless. That is the ethos we must recover — a United Nations that belongs to the peoples, not alone to their governments, many of whom sadly lack their people’s mandate.
In this spirit, let us demand that the UN80 Initiative be reclaimed by those who still believe in its promise — the activists and young dreamers who look to the United Nations as the parliament of humanity, not as a project of political expediency. Let it be judged not by the number of consultants it hires or summits it convenes, but by whether it restores trust in the very idea of collective good.
Courage to Confront the Subservience
If the UN80 Initiative is to mean anything, it must mean courage — the courage to confront the subservience that undermines faith in the institution, the courage to stand apart from the powerful, and the courage to make the Culture of Peace once again the beating heart of the United Nations.
Last night I finished reading a fascinating book titled “Peacemaker — U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World”. Let me read from the book saying “Over the past half decade, Thant stood up to both superpowers and survived. And his survival meant the survival of an Afro-Asian vision of the world at the very apex of global diplomacy.” It made me proud to be an Asian…and as Asians, all of us should be.
Let us remember always: the UN does not need to be reinvented; it needs to be re-inspired. And that inspiration must come not from the corridors of power but from the conscience of humanity. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Image: A view of the UN Headquarters in New York. UN Photo/Loey Felipe