WANG XIAOYING/CHINA DAILY
As the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York this month, world leaders will gather beneath a system whose founding premises appear, for the first time in decades, genuinely fragile: protracted conflicts that continue to test the principles of the UN Charter, trade fragmentation that has strained the multilateral trading system, climate-driven displacement and artificial intelligence reshaping the distribution of power faster than any treaty can regulate. Multilateralism faces serious challenges, and defending it requires acknowledging that its architecture has not kept pace with the world it is meant to govern.
The international system established around the United Nations in 1945 reflected the realities and power structures of the time.
Eight decades later, entire regions still carry less weight within that architecture than their demography, economic significance and diplomatic maturity now warrant.
Africa, home to the world's youngest population and to resources central to the energy and digital transitions; Latin America, with more than 600 million inhabitants; South Asia, home to nearly a quarter of humanity; and Southeast Asia, through one of the world's most successful models of regional cooperation in ASEAN. All deserve, eight decades on, a role in shaping the rules of the system commensurate with their weight in it. This is not an argument for dismantling what exists but an argument for strengthening and updating it, so that these regions become co-architects of the system rather than its latecomer guests.
