Photo illustration by Michael Emono / THE REPUBLIC.
THE MINISTRY OF WORLD AFFAIRS
Is the United Nations Going South?
Photo illustration by Michael Emono / THE REPUBLIC.
THE MINISTRY OF WORLD AFFAIRS
Is the United Nations Going South?
Few dispute that the United Nations embodies the promise of multilateral cooperation, however uneven its record. There is less certainty about its future, unsettled by political retreat, financial austerity and reform fatigue. What remains least clear is whether the UN’s emerging geography—marked by the shift of some programs to the global South—signals a new balance of voice in global governance or simply a bureaucratic reshuffle.
To see why this matters, it helps to recall how the UN came to command legitimacy in the first place. For much of the post–Second World War era, the institution rested on the power and patronage of the United States, which underwrote both its infrastructure and authority. Washington’s willingness to foot the bills and project leadership gave the UN stability, but it also left the institution vulnerable to shifts in American politics. This revealed a deeper truth. As Hedley Bull, an Australian scholar of international relations, observed in his 1977 book The Anarchical Society, rules and institutions alone cannot secure order in world politics. Order ultimately depends on the great powers willing to enforce it. The UN may fly the flag of multilateralism, but quite frankly its authority has always rested on the shoulders of the few willing to carry it.
Nowhere was this clearer than in 1949, when Harry Truman, just four years after the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945, pledged at the Capitol to give the UN his ‘unfaltering support’. By doing so, Truman cast American power as the ballast that would steady a fragile experiment in global cooperation. Multilateralism, after all, was never altruistic: it served American primacy by stabilizing a world order congenial to US interests. Yet, for decades after Truman, successive administrations, whatever their reservations, largely accepted that the US leadership within the UN was a strategic investment that paid dividends in stability and influence. By contrast, nearly 70 years later, in 2017, President Donald Trump’s declaration at the marble rostrum in New York that he would ‘always put America first’ inverted the premise. The UN was no longer an enterprise to be fortified by US leadership, but a forum to be engaged with only insofar as it bent to sovereign interests. That uncertainty over America’s role was laid bare again at the long-awaited UNGA80, where President Trump’s address imagined a world steered by national will, with the UN merely an echo of a fading consensus.
The trouble is that in 2025, 80 years after the UN’s creation, the great-power shoulders on which it once rested are no longer as steady. The broader appeal of unilateralism has accelerated a turn toward nationalist exceptionalism that undermines the ethos of international solidarity. The retreat from collective purpose has not only eroded confidence in multilateral action but also set a precedent for withdrawal that other states have followed, casting doubt on the role and relevance of the UN itself. This weakening of great-power ballast is the backdrop against which new questions about the UN’s emerging geography must be understood. If legitimacy can no longer rest on a single hegemon, can it be redistributed through relocation and reform?
THE SOUTHWARD SHIFT
These challenges come amid the UN80 reform debates, where member states are struggling with issues of representation, transparency and effectiveness in a world no longer defined by a single hegemon. At the same time, budget pressures and shifting geopolitics are pushing UN agencies to move major programs away from their traditional bases in New York, Geneva and Vienna. These strains have only intensified recently, accelerated by the Trump administration’s decision to slash US contributions to agencies ranging from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and to withdraw entirely from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). By defunding left, right and centre, Washington has both exposed and deepened the UN’s financial fragility.
Against this backdrop, cities in the global South including Bangkok in Thailand, Doha in Qatar and Kigali in Rwanda, are increasingly mentioned as potential hubs for relocated UN programs, reflecting a broader effort to rebalance the organization’s geography. Nairobi, Kenya, already hosting the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), stands out in this landscape as a leading contender and an emerging centre of global diplomacy, especially on climate and development. For instance, it hosted the UN Environment Assembly, which in 2022 launched negotiations for a global treaty on plastic pollution, as well as the 2023 Africa Climate Summit, which produced the Nairobi Declaration. Such initiatives underscore how global South cities are gradually shaping multilateral outcomes rather than merely hosting them. In this sense, the southward move is not just logistical but potentially political, a chance to re-anchor legitimacy in new voices and priorities.
One can read this as the first step in decolonizing a system long tilted toward northern priorities. Still, whether this southward drift amounts to a bona fide redistribution of voice within multilateralism remains uncertain. The UN was never meant to serve only the interests of the hegemonic few; it was founded to give all nations an equal voice, even if that principle was quickly compromised by the dominance of a few great powers. This moment is therefore not only about addressing the legacies of colonial hierarchy but also about giving multilateralism a second chance. It offers the UN an opportunity to approach something closer to its original design in a world less scarred by decolonization, and where African and other global South states have more confidence, capacity and leverage to stand their ground.
shop the republic
-
‘The Empire Hacks Back’ by Olalekan Jeyifous by Olalekan Jeyifous
Price range: ₦70,000.00 through ₦75,000.00 -
‘Make the World Burn Again’ by Edel Rodriguez by Edel Rodriguez
Price range: ₦70,000.00 through ₦75,000.00 -
‘Nigerian Theatre’ Print by Shalom Ojo
₦150,000.00 -
‘Natural Synthesis’ Print by Diana Ejaita
Price range: ₦70,000.00 through ₦75,000.00
shop the republic
THE INWARD RETREAT
Yet, this re-centring of voice and legitimacy unfolds against growing scepticism about multilateralism itself. The waning appetite for multilateralism is not only evident in Washington’s retreat but part of a wider fracture in global politics. The UN, long a central symbol of international cooperation despite persistent contestation and uneven performance, now competes with an expanding patchwork of forums and coalitions. States are increasingly turning to regional blocs, informal partnerships and alternative alignments, a shift that conveys not only frustration with the UN’s paralysis but also a conviction that the postwar order no longer mirrors today’s balance of power. Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has described this moment as an ‘era of disorder’, a world less at peace, less prosperous and less adept at meeting the challenges it faces. The fraying of cooperation and the retreat of American leadership, he argues, lie at the heart of this instability. In this landscape, the UN remains rhetorically indispensable, but its authority is steadily diluted each time states choose to act elsewhere.
The UN’s shifting geography matters precisely because it unfolds in this moment of fractured cooperation and institutional fatigue. Southern cities offer a cheaper and less encumbered base for UN operations at a time when northern governments are preoccupied with their own crises. They also provide an opportunity to ground multilateralism in new political realities. In any case, the emergence of southern cities in places like Nairobi— which I intend to interrogate more closely—reflect both fiscal necessity and political recalibration. This underscores how the UN’s future legitimacy may depend on broadening its institutional footprint. As Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore and Susan Sell remind us in ‘Who Governs the Globe?’ (2010), global governance is defined by ‘global governors’ whose authority is constantly renegotiated rather than fixed. The decision to relocate major UN agencies to Nairobi can thus be read as part of this wider diffusion of authority across new sites of legitimacy. Seen through this lens, it functions as both a practical and symbolic hub, capturing the UN’s evolving configuration while exposing the enduring tensions of equity, history, and voice. It is also within this fractured landscape that Nairobi emerges as a test case for how the global South is reshaping multilateralism.
shop the republic
NAIROBI AS A TEST CASE
Kenya’s role in this experiment is revealing. From independence in 1963, the country has cultivated a multilateral identity, presenting itself as a dependable partner to both Africa and the wider international community. As Faith Mabera, a former senior researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue in South Africa, has pointed out, the posture grew out of Kenya’s early focus on non-alignment, African solidarity and global engagement. Nairobi as its capital soon came to embody this orientation. It became the regional city par excellence in Anglophone Africa, the de facto base for non-governmental organizations, corporations and international organizations, with Dakar serving as its Francophone counterpart. While African cities like Addis Ababa’s influence rests on the African Union (AU) and Abuja’s reach is largely West African with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), one would argue that Nairobi combines breadth of institutional presence, international connectivity and an active political culture. These attributes, together with one of the continent’s most politically engaged young populations, position it as a leading hub for southern political influence and cooperation. These qualities have roots in history. The turning point came in 1972, when the UN chose Nairobi as the headquarters of UNEP.
The decision was unprecedented. As Maria Ivanova, a scholar of global governance and environmental policy, notes, Kenya’s bid was framed in terms of fairness: if the UN was truly universal, its institutions could not all be clustered in the global North. The decision created the first headquarters of a major UN international body in the global South, a victory for developing countries seeking not only participation but visibility. Hosting UN-Habitat in 1978 further consolidated Nairobi’s position, embedding environmental diplomacy and urban governance within a city living through those very challenges.
Over time, Nairobi has evolved into a compass for southern climate diplomacy. Climate change represents not only an existential challenge for the global South but also a defining arena of international politics — one that fuses questions of justice, finance, and development into a single, tangled field. For African states, this has created both vulnerability and opportunity. Vulnerability because of disproportionate impacts, and opportunity because climate diplomacy often offers a stage to exercise leadership and coalition building. Nairobi embodies this role through the presence of the UNEP, whose ecofriendly headquarters, opened in 2011, stands as a model of sustainable design in Africa and a marker of institutional anchoring in the global South. Kenya has leveraged this platform to exercise what Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power’: influence through attraction, credibility and agenda setting. Here, Kenya’s soft power does not rest on cultural appeal but on diplomatic convening, representational leadership and the ability to frame narratives around climate justice, sustainable development and South–South cooperation that attract partners and build legitimacy.
By hosting the inaugural Africa Climate Summit in 2023 and shaping the Nairobi Declaration, Kenya used ideas and institutions as tools of influence. Kenya positioned the summit as a stage from which Africa would articulate a common voice, calling for a restructuring of global finance to meet adaptation and development needs. The declaration consolidated African leaders’ demands for climate finance reform, just energy transitions and recognition of Africa’s natural capital. Scholars of international relations have noted that coalitions of developing countries have long sought visibility and equity within international institutions. By convening African leaders in this spirit, Kenya placed itself at the forefront of what Robert Falkner, a scholar of global environmental politics, describes as the ‘new logic’ of climate diplomacy, marked by nationally determined pledges and international review. In the African context, this logic has manifested through political signalling and coalition building. As such, the host city’s role not only reinforced Kenya’s multilateral ambitions but also exemplified the broader project of third world multilateralism, challenging structural inequalities while advancing collective agency in global governance.
Kenya’s leadership appears extended beyond the environment into global health. Few issues have shaped the country’s international profile more than its struggle against HIV/AIDS, which has demanded sustained domestic mobilization since the 1990s. This experience has conferred credibility on Kenya as both a testing ground for effective responses and a defender of equity in global health governance. In 2024, this recognition took two forms: Kenya assumed the chair of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) and hosted its 55th meeting in Nairobi—the first time the board had convened in Africa since Lusaka in 2006. The decision mattered because the PCB is the main forum where UNAIDS sets its strategic direction, and meeting in Nairobi highlighted both Africa’s disproportionate burden of the epidemic and Kenya’s interest in taking on a larger role in global health leadership. The gathering stressed priorities of treatment access, prevention and social protection, while giving the host a platform to connect its domestic record with continental concerns. Much like in climate diplomacy, Nairobi again served as the stage where African voices could be projected into international debates, this time on the future of the global HIV response.
Also, Nairobi’s engagement in multilateral affairs is deeply tied to the global conversation on urbanization and the future of cities, a theme institutionalized through the headquarters of the UN-Habitat, located in the city since 1978. If UNEP has made Nairobi a focal point for environmental diplomacy, then UN-Habitat has positioned it as a hub for advancing urban resilience, sustainable housing and inclusive development. In a century that is decisively urban, with two thirds of humanity expected to live in cities by 2050, the governance of urban growth has become inseparable from debates on sustainability, justice and security. For most of the South urbanizing at an unprecedented pace, this presents a dilemma. Cities embody immense energy and enterprise but are also sites of acute inequality, infrastructural strain and vulnerability to climate shocks. Through its role as host to UN-Habitat, Kenya has situated itself at the core of these debates and emerged as a platform for addressing the challenges and opportunities of the urban age.
shop the republic
shop the republic
NEW SITES OF MULTILATERALISM
Taken together, Nairobi’s roles in climate diplomacy, global health and urban governance point to a shift in how global agency is organized. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that southern countries already wield the same influence as traditional northern powers in shaping multilateral agendas and outcomes. Much of the decision-making and resource control remains elsewhere. What cities like Nairobi reveal instead is that agency is no longer exercised exclusively from northern centres; it is increasingly performed, recognized and legitimized in the global South. That growing visibility as a platform of global debate reflects a broader reordering of international governance. The UN’s southward moves should, in part, be understood in this light. What appears as administrative adjustment is, more fundamentally, an attempt to broaden participation and embed new sites within global conversations.
Yet again, placing agencies in new locations does not on its own solve the structural problems that define the UN. Chief among them are its financial foundations, which have become increasingly precarious. In the current climate, relocation appears to follow budget pressures rather than political vision guided by long-term reform. Today’s recurring fiscal crises that strain the UN mean that programs based in Nairobi and elsewhere in the South may carry important weight but operate with fewer mobilized resources, limiting what they can achieve. Without reforms to how the UN is financed and resources distributed, the shift risks reinforcing the very imbalances it was meant to challenge. Even so, the funding shortfall could yet become an opening for southern leadership, as governments treat support for UN programs as a political investment in a fairer multilateral order—one that redistributes not just presence, but purpose, within the international system.
Ultimately, visibility matters and is at the heart of this discussion. These trends signal an effort to project the global South as a source of solutions rather than only a site of problems. It is increasingly clear that location shapes legitimacy because it affects who sets the stage for global debates and whose concerns are prioritized. When decision making is rooted closer to societies most affected by poverty, climate change and inequality, global governance becomes less remote and more representative. In effect, this places the UN within the perspectives of communities long kept at the margins of international authority.
The real test, then, lies on two fronts. The first is whether new southern hubs can muster the resources, expertise and credibility to become authentic centres of policy innovation rather than outposts of a northern-dominated order. The second is whether African states and other voices from the global South can summon the political will and belief in shared values to sustain collective leadership, rather than relying primarily on appeals for northern restraint. Only if these conditions are met can new hubs begin to bend the rules of global governance toward greater equity.
Haass’s ‘era of disorder’ still frames the moment in which the UN now operates. It is within this unsettled landscape that the organization must steer a future unlikely to resemble the hegemon-backed stability of the mid-twentieth century but not yet fated to irrelevance. Its geography is shifting, unevenly and ambiguously, toward the global South. Whether this shift amounts to decolonization or mere dispersal will hinge less on the relocation of offices and more on the redistribution of voice, agency and imagination. In many ways, the rise of new hubs of multilateralism may be both a bellwether and a test case. If it can turn visibility into leverage, convening into influence, then the UN’s southward drift could mark the beginning of a genuine pluralization of multilateralism. If not, it may prove only a structural reordering in an already fragmented order⎈
BUY THE MAGAZINE AND/OR THE COVER
-
‘The Empire Hacks Back’ by Olalekan Jeyifous by Olalekan Jeyifous
Price range: ₦70,000.00 through ₦75,000.00 This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page -
The Republic V9, N3 An African Manual for Debugging Empire
₦20,000.00
