UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres Calls for Reform of ‘Outdated, Dysfunctional, and Unfair’ Global Financial Architecture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“outdated, dysfunctional, and unfair” financial system needs to be reformed, including Bretton Woods institutions.
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.”
Furthermore, Guterres acknowledged current institutions were outdated and answered to a deprecated world configuration, calling for reforms that would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.”
The U.N. Security Council has been
widely criticized as small and ineffective by several scholars consulted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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.
