Fitter for Purpose?

Abstract

This chapter asks whether the world organization can become fitter for purpose. An essential motivation for getting right the understanding of the Third UN is the need to identify the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the “whole” organization. It is especially challenging to identify how the UN should act in the era of information disorder and public health pandemics, and thus how a variety of knowledge brokers from the Third UN can help the UN think. The task to analyze what the UN can and cannot do, as well as how to make it fitter-for-purpose, should have been undertaken more vigorously and earlier. However, it is even more crucial in the age of new nationalisms and populisms. In light of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and global economic meltdown, the breakdown of international cooperation and the pressing need for a robust multilateral system could not be more obvious, even if it is not clear to new nationalists.