Taking the pulse of the UN at 80

Send us Fan Mail This week on Inside Geneva , we take the pulse of the United Nations as it turns 80. “Someone celebrating their 80th birthday cannot be expected to be in tip-top shape. The UN is an old lady,” says Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director at the Kofi Annan Foundation. Some world leaders don’t have much time for the UN. “All I got from the UN was an escalator that stopped halfway on the way up and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” said US President Donald Trump. Others think it needs an injection of fresh ideas. “We have to reimagine the UN, and reimagine multilateralism, from the point of confidence. And this confidence only comes once we account for the lived realities of people from the Global South,” says Prathit Singh, project coordinator at the Geneva Policy Outlook. “It’s just not the right answer anymore to have all these men in dark suits in conference rooms deciding the future of humanity,” continues Momal-Vanian. But we shouldn’t forget its successes: from eradicating smallpox, to reducing maternal mortality, to supporting the most vulnerable every day, all over the world. “It’s important to keep our optimism, and maybe realise that the UN is what we make of it,” says Fuad Zarbiyev, professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute. “What would happen if we don’t cooperate? If we look at Covid, if we look at a potential climate disaster? People will be forced to cooperate and I think that’s something we should never forget,” adds analyst Daniel Warner. Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva. Get in touch! Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or

You can listen to Taking the pulse of the UN at 80 online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Taking the pulse of the UN at 80 is an episode from Inside Geneva by SWI swissinfo.ch.

This episode is 42:55 long.

This episode was published on Oct 28, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Inside Geneva when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.