With the world in crisis, many say end globalisation. I say that would be a mistake | Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

TThe year 2025 should be a period of celebration, marking eight decades of the existence of the United Nations. But this may descend into history as the year in which the international order has been built since 1945 has collapsed.

The cracks have long been visible. Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya and the war in Ukraine, certain permanent members of the Security Council have trivialized the illegal use of force. The failure to act towards the genocide in Gaza represents a denial of the most fundamental values of humanity. The inability to overcome the differences is to fuel a new escalation of violence in the Middle East, the last chapter of which includes the attack on Iran.

The law of the strongest also threatens the multilateral trading system. Balayage prices disrupt value chains and push the global economy in a spiral of high price and stagnation. The World Trade Organization has been dug and no one remembers the Doha development tour.

The 2008 financial collapse revealed the failure of neoliberal globalization, but the world has remained locked up in the austerity game book. The choice to bail out ultra-rich and large companies to the detriment of ordinary citizens and small businesses has deepened inequalities. Over the past 10 years, the $ 33.9 TN (25 tn £) accumulated by the richest 1% in the world is equivalent to 22 times the resources necessary to eradicate global poverty, according to an Oxfam report.

The workforce on the capacity of the state has led to public distrust towards institutions. Discontent has become a fertile field for extremist stories that threaten democracy and promote hatred as a political project.

Many countries have reduced cooperation programs instead of redoubling efforts to implement sustainable development objectives by 2030. The available resources are insufficient, the costs are high, access is bureaucratic and the conditions imposed often do not respect local realities.

It is not a question of charity, but of the fight against the disparities rooted in centuries of exploitation, interference and violence against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. In a world with a combined GDP of more than $ 100 TN, it is unacceptable that more than 700 million people still suffer from hunger and live without electricity or water.

The richest countries have the greatest historical responsibility for carbon emissions, but it is the poorest who will suffer the most from the climate crisis. The year 2024 was the hottest in history, showing that reality is evolving faster than the Paris Agreement. The binding obligations of the Kyoto protocol were replaced by voluntary commitments, and the funding commitments made at COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009 – promising $ 100 billion per year – have never been materialized. The recent increase in NATO military spending makes this possibility even further.

Attacks on international institutions are unaware of the concrete benefits that the multilateral system has brought to people’s lives. If the smallpox has been eradicated, the preserved ozone layer and labor rights still protected in a large part of the world, it is thanks to the efforts of these institutions.

During increasing polarization periods, terms such as “relieving” have become commonplace. But it is impossible to “move” our shared existence. No wall is high enough to preserve the islands of peace and prosperity surrounded by violence and misery.

The world of today is very different from that of 1945. New forces have emerged and new challenges appeared. If international organizations seem ineffective, it is because their structure no longer reflects the current reality. Unilateral and exclusive actions are aggravated by the absence of collective leadership. The solution to the multilateralism crisis is not to abandon it, but to rebuild it on more equitable and more inclusive foundations.

It is an understanding that Brazil – whose vocation has always been to promote collaboration between nations – demonstrated during its presidency of the G20 last year and continues to demonstrate through its presidencies of the BRICS and COP 30 this year: that it is possible to find an agreement even in negative scenarios.

There is an urgent need to revise diplomacy and to reconstruct the foundations of true multilateralism – capable of responding to the outcry of a fearful humanity for its future. It is only then that we can passively stop looking at the rise of inequality, the insensation of war and the destruction of our own planet.

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