Let us state the obvious: global governance has been in a bad state for the longest time. This the world knows and so do the great powers, in whose national interests global governance remains trapped. No surprise here.
Hubristically interpreting its victory in World War 2 to mean that the world was for it alone to govern, one hegemon began designing global institutions, starting with the United Nations, with a bias towards its national interest. Ditto global finance, trade, legal and more. They all come designed with hegemonic flaws. Consider the International Monetary Fund.
This so-called international body is founded on two motives: to impose Western neoliberal economic models on all economies and to go to the aid of financially distressed countries when it deems necessary, not as determined by the crisis.
Begin with the first motive. Nation after nation, faced with a financial crisis, has hurtled into a far more severe crisis after the IMF's neoliberal economic model-based austerity drive. Yet it refuses to abandon this model.
Crisis-ridden Egypt of 2011 is an example of the IMF's second motive. For three years Egypt and the IMF were in discussions without striking any deal. By then, Cairo was at its anaemic worst, but for the IMF the crisis doesn't call the shots, the institution does.
Likewise, the hegemon and its allies determine whether or not genocide is being committed. This is why the slaughter in Gaza of infants, children, women and the elderly, live streamed daily, isn't genocide to the UN Security Council when it is to others. This is why again Washington keeps vetoing UNSC resolutions calling for Israeli accountability.
Even though the International Court of Justice, the world's supreme court, if you will, ruled that genocide was "plausible" there. Another court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), is even being prevented from issuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, both accused of war crimes.
What is worse, the ICC is being threatened with sanctions if it proceeds to execute the arrest warrants. Countries which are parties to the Rome Statute, a treaty that created the ICC, are also being threatened with sanctions if they arrest the pair as they are required by law.
The UN is a walking cadaver and international law is on life support. Little wonder, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for the umpteenth time, and joined by other leaders from the Global South, like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, in as many forums, has called for global governance to be reformed into life.
Anwar's latest call to urgently redress global governance was made in his keynote address titled "Sovereignty and Fair Interdependence: The Global South and Democratisation of Prosperity" to the 2024 Common Action Forum in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. "When nations perpetrate violence and with impunity, when millions remain in poverty, and when climate disasters devastate vulnerable communities — these are policy and moral failures that demand urgent action."
To Anwar, world leaders have a clear choice: continue with a system that marginalises most of humanity or build a new world order founded on genuine partnership, shared prosperity and sustainable development. So is his message to them: nothing less than bold change will make global governance fit for its purpose.