Khalilur Rahman Opens UNGA81 With Warning That United Nations Must Change With the World
By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN NEWS
UNITED NATIONS, New York — The 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly opened Tuesday with its new president delivering an unusually direct warning about the institution he now leads: the world has changed fundamentally since the UN was created eight decades ago, and the organization must change with it. Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh took the gavel at UN Headquarters as wars, geopolitical division, climate emergencies and declining confidence in multilateral institutions place growing pressure on a system designed in the aftermath of World War Two. His message was distilled into a stark observation — this is no longer the world of 1945.
Rahman formally opened the session at 3 p.m. New York time after receiving the General Assembly's Icelandic wooden gavel from outgoing president Annalena Baerbock. He placed restoration of trust at the centre of his presidency under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All.” Rather than presenting reform as an abstract institutional debate, Rahman linked the UN's credibility directly to whether it can produce results in a world facing brutal conflicts, widening inequality, climate emergencies and rapidly changing technologies.
His most consequential argument concerned the distance between the institution's origins and the international system it now serves. Rahman said trust in the UN was in deficit and stressed that the organization must become fit for the future, declaring that the world had moved on since 1945 and the UN must move with it. That framing places institutional adaptation near the centre of UNGA81 at a time when demands for Security Council reform, stronger representation for developing countries and more effective responses to conflicts have intensified across the membership.
Rahman's programme divides the coming year into six connected priorities: peace and security; accelerating sustainable development; climate resilience and environmental sustainability; human rights and humanitarian protection; inclusive governance of digital technology and artificial intelligence; and renewed multilateralism accompanied by UN reform. His office argues that these areas cannot be treated separately — peace becomes harder where development fails, development becomes less sustainable as the planet destabilizes, and neither can be protected by institutions that governments and populations no longer trust.
The peace agenda may provide the earliest test. Secretary-General António Guterres told the opening meeting that the new session begins amid conflicts and geopolitical divisions, the danger of nuclear escalation, persistent poverty and inequality and worsening climate disruption. Rahman has pledged to prioritize prevention and political solutions, strengthen peacebuilding and civilian protection and use the General Assembly as a venue for dialogue at a moment when divisions among major powers have repeatedly complicated collective action elsewhere in the UN system.
UN reform will meanwhile move from a broad political demand into a series of institutional decisions. The session overlaps with the UN80 initiative, the organization's effort to examine efficiencies, mandates and structural changes across the UN system. Major states and developing-country blocs are also expected to continue pressing competing visions of Security Council reform, including questions of representation that have remained unresolved despite decades of negotiations. Rahman's promise to act as a bridge-builder will therefore be measured against issues where Member States broadly agree that change is necessary but remain deeply divided over what that change should look like.
Another major transition will take place above the General Assembly itself. UNGA81 will participate in the process of selecting the successor to António Guterres, whose term ends this year, with the next Secretary-General due to take office in January 2027. Guterres described rebuilding trust in multilateralism as a defining challenge and said the international problem-solving system was more necessary precisely because of the turmoil confronting it. The selection of his successor will consequently unfold alongside the institutional reform debate Rahman has placed at the centre of his presidency.
Artificial intelligence adds a distinctly 2026 dimension to a system founded before the digital age. Rahman's agenda calls for digital governance and AI development that benefits societies rather than deepens existing inequality, while protecting future generations from emerging risks. Combined with climate resilience, migration, humanitarian protection and the SDGs, the technology agenda illustrates why his 1945 comparison extends beyond the composition of UN institutions: many of the problems governments now expect the organization to address either did not exist in their current form when the Charter was drafted or have become fundamentally transnational.
Yet the central contradiction facing Rahman's presidency is that the General Assembly's universality is also a limitation on its power. All 193 Member States participate on an equal-vote basis, making it the UN's broadest representative forum, but most General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. Rahman can convene negotiations, shape agendas and build political coalitions, but many of the institutional changes being demanded ultimately depend on governments agreeing to redistribute influence they have been reluctant to surrender.
That makes “This is not 1945” more than an opening-day phrase. It establishes a benchmark against which the 81st session can eventually be judged. If UNGA81 produces progress on institutional reform, development financing, emerging technology governance and the transition to a new Secretary-General, Rahman's presidency could help translate a widely acknowledged crisis of multilateral confidence into tangible change. If entrenched geopolitical divisions again prevent meaningful reform, the gap between the world the UN was designed for and the world it is being asked to govern will become even harder to ignore.