The Crisis of Multilateralism: A Shared Normative Reckoning
The crisis in multilateralism is part of a larger crisis of democracy—one rooted in real participation, accountability, dialogue, and shared responsibility.
On May 5, the annual symposium on the role of religion and faith-based organizations in international affairs convened for the twelfth time. It brought together nearly 500 participants, both on-site at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York and online.
The symposium convened under the theme “Faith Meets Global Values: Crisis and Promise of Multilateralism,” against a daunting backdrop of a multilateral system that “is navigating one of its most difficult periods since its founding.”
In this edition of The Present Tense, here’s a brief, revised version of my remarks as the symposium’s Panel A moderator.
We gather in a kairotic moment—charged with moral consequence, when history urges us to interpret events and take responsibility for the future. It’s about whether the global community sees cooperation among nations as a path to dignity, justice, and peace, or as a casualty of fear, fragmentation, and force.
Multilateralism is humanity’s boldest moral experiment, betting that sovereignty doesn’t cancel solidarity, borders shouldn’t block dignity, and our destinies are linked. This wager is now tested—politically, financially, normatively, and ethically—with failure costing institutions, people, and the planet.
The concept note for the twelfth symposium highlights the challenge: we are in a tough period for multilateral cooperation since the UN’s founding. Geopolitical fragmentation, nationalism, resource gaps, declining aid, and militarization weaken institutions meant to protect the vulnerable. The UN faces a liquidity crisis risking mandates, staffing, and credibility amid rising global needs.
This is more than a governance crisis; it’s a crisis of deferred healing, as faith communities across cultures call for restoration, reconciliation, and wholeness. The world must prevent multilateralism from weakening, as this endangers hope and increases polarization, making global unity more fragile and prone to rupture.
The crisis in multilateralism is part of a larger crisis of democracy—one rooted in real participation, accountability, dialogue, and shared responsibility. It didn’t just develop as institutions but as a way nations organized relations beyond borders—favoring law, cooperation, and dialogue over force, domination, and coercion.
Across regions, we see warning signs: declining participation, shrinking civic space, deepening polarization, and growing distrust of public institutions. At the same time, the language of solidarity, social justice, and cooperation is being displaced by fear, competition, and exclusion. These shifts affect domestic governance and hollow out international cooperation at its moral core.
A full examination of the global crisis of democracy deserves its own dedicated focus, and that is not the task of this panel. But it is essential to recognize at the outset that multilateralism cannot be renewed in isolation from the values that sustain democratic life. When foundational values erode, institutions—no matter how well designed—struggle to endure.
Let’s assess the current reality through a shared ethical lens, not just as a technical review. It’s a moral reckoning, urging us to uphold core values of cooperation and principles that must not be compromised, even under pressure, to guide our shared life.
At stake in multilateralism are the foundations of a rules-based international order: international law, international humanitarian law, human rights, and the principle of sovereign equality. These are not abstractions. They indicate a credibility gap and a legitimacy deficit.
From a civil-society and multifaith view, the crisis of multilateralism is both institutional and relational. Cooperation weakens as trust erodes, civic space shrinks, and those most impacted are excluded from decision-making. Civil society—including faith-based actors—is essential, grounding policy in lived realities, ethics, and accountability.
In this ethical grammar, sovereignty must be reimagined—serving life. Ethical sovereignty turns power into responsibility, borders into protection zones, and budgets into moral documents open to scrutiny. Global cooperation doesn’t weaken sovereignty; it deepens it, as true sovereignty requires equal responsibility for peace, rights, ecology, and the common good.
As UN reform discussions grow, driven by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s UN80 Initiative, we must first identify what to preserve and strengthen. Reform that weakens mandates, protections, or participation worsens fractures, not heals them.
But we are not without hope.
Multilateralism has never been sustained by institutions alone. It is sustained by movements and moments—by grassroots commitments, transnational solidarities, and moral traditions that insist, across differences, that cooperation is not naïve but necessary. Movements give ethical direction to institutions; institutions, at their best, lend durability and scale to shared moral purpose.
Our work is at least threefold: to name honestly where multilateral cooperation is fraying and why; to reaffirm the normative commitments that must not be compromised; and to recover the ethical imagination needed to hold sovereignty, solidarity, and shared responsibility together in this fractured hour—for people, planet, and generations to come.
The Present Tense, a monthly column of reflections, is written by Levi Bautista, Assistant General Secretary for United Nations and International Affairs of The General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church.
