It’s been a tumultuous year for multilateralism. The United Nations (UN) 2024 Summit of the Future took place amid profound pessimism about the ability of the multilateral system to meet the great challenges of our time, from wars to pandemics to climate change. Yet the summit was also an example of multilateralism at work, with every UN member state coming together to negotiate a Pact for the Future that commits them to making improvements to global governance. Now, following the reelection of Donald Trump as president of the United States (US), any optimism left over from the summit may fade amid anxiety over Trump’s history of hostility toward multilateral cooperation.
This moment of uncertainty about the future of multilateralism is a good time to look at what we can learn from recent trends in multilateral cooperation, including following Trump’s previous victory in 2016. Toward this end, the International Peace Institute and the Institute for Economics & Peace developed the 2024 Multilateralism Index. The Index uses 45 indicators to assess changes in multilateral cooperation over the past decade (2013–2023) across five domains: Peace and Security, Human Rights, Climate Action, Public Health, and Trade. It evaluates each of these domains across three dimensions: Participation, Performance, and Inclusivity (see charts below). What does the Index tell us about recent trends in multilateral cooperation, and how might these trends shift under a second Trump presidency?
Performance Declined across Every Domain
Performance is the only dimension where the multilateral system saw a decline across every domain. This indicates that some global crises are outstripping the multilateral system’s ability to respond.
The biggest decline was in peace and security. Between 2013 and 2022, the number of active armed conflicts in the world rose from 39 to 55. The number of conflict-related fatalities has also risen: 2022 was the deadliest year since 1994 (the year of the Rwandan genocide), largely due to the wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia, and the wars in Sudan and Israel-Palestine have killed tens of thousands of civilians since 2023. Moreover, the number and durability of peace agreements have both declined over the past decade. While the UN continues to play a critical role in alleviating suffering through humanitarian aid, it has proven unable to prevent or resolve a growing number of deadly conflicts.
This decline extended beyond peace and security. Human rights protections have been steadily deteriorating for the past decade across nearly every region of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on global performance on public health, leading to reversals in global life expectancy and vaccine coverage. Carbon emissions reached a new high in 2023, well exceeding the level required to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
Despite these declines in multilateral performance, the gears of the multilateral system are continuing to turn. The UN Human Rights Council passed more resolutions in 2023 than ever before, while the UN General Assembly passed more resolutions in 2022 and 2023 than in any other year since 2015. But the passage of resolutions is a shallow measure of performance. Moreover, robust activity in the General Assembly could partly reflect the growing dysfunction of the UN Security Council, where three of the five permanent members have increasingly used their veto power to block action. Moreover, the Security Council resolutions that do get passed on crises like those in Myanmar and Israel-Palestine tend to have little impact on the ground—a far cry from the early 2010s, when the council authorized major UN peacekeeping operations to protect civilians in South Sudan, Mali, and the Central African Republic.
Participation is Robust but Increasingly Reflects Contestation
Despite broad declines in performance, the Index does not find a major drop-off in states’ participation in the multilateral system over the past decade. In fact, participation increased across almost every domain. This signals that member states have not withdrawn from the multilateral system, despite fears that this might happen, especially following Trump’s election win in 2016. During his first presidency, Trump did pull the US out of parts of the multilateral system, including the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the World Health Organization, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. However, most of these decisions were reversed by Joe Biden after 2020. Moreover, most states responded to these withdrawals not by following the US out the door but by doubling down on multilateralism.
More recently, the persistence and breadth of states’ ongoing engagement in the multilateral system was demonstrated by their active participation in the Summit of the Future. One telling moment came on the last day of the summit when an overwhelming majority of UN member states, led by the African Union, blocked a last-minute attempt by Russia to derail the Pact for the Future.
However, looking more closely at the Index’s participation indicators reveals that these increases in participation do not necessarily signal a broad-based increase in commitment to multilateral action. One example is states’ participation in multilateral treaties and agreements. States’ participation in existing agreements has largely held steady or increased over the past decade. States have also adopted several new major agreements and treaties, including the Paris Agreement (2015), Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017), Global Biodiversity Framework (2022), and High Seas Treaty (2023). But adherence to these agreements is variable. For example, the recent UN Biodiversity Conference in Colombia highlighted states’ lack of significant progress toward the biodiversity targets they set two years prior. Moreover, the past few years have seen reversals in participation in disarmament treaties due to rising tensions between the US and Russia.
Similarly, trends in financial contributions to the UN are complicated to assess as an indicator of multilateral participation. Financial contributions have grown across much of the UN system over the past decade. However, this growth has disproportionately been in earmarked contributions with spending restrictions, has been outpaced by the rise in needs, and only reflects the participation of wealthy countries. It is therefore important also to look beyond the Index at less quantifiable forms of participation, such as the diplomatic efforts of many small island developing states to advance multilateral climate action.
Another reason to be cautious about celebrating the growth of multilateral participation is that the nature of that participation has shifted from cooperation toward contestation. Member states are competing to define the future of the multilateral system and disagree about what that future should entail. This contestation is not inherently negative. In part, it reflects the growing determination of countries in the Global South to come together to assert their interests. But certain forms of contestation can undermine the performance of the multilateral system.
Human rights are a good example of this trend. The Index finds that participation in the UN human rights system has increased or held steady over the past decade. Yet the past decade has also seen a dramatic increase in the number of “hostile amendments” proposed by states looking to dilute Human Rights Council resolutions. This could indicate that many states are engaging in the council less out of a desire to foster multilateral action on human rights than to shape the direction of the human rights architecture. It is telling that member states serving on the Human Rights Council have generally had a worse average human rights record than the world as a whole.
The shift toward contestation has been especially pronounced among some of the most powerful states due to rising geopolitical tensions. For example, just in the past two years, Russia has vetoed Security Council resolutions related to its invasion of Ukraine, humanitarian access corridors into Syria, and arms embargoes on North Korea and Mali. For its part, the US has vetoed several resolutions related to Israel-Palestine. As geopolitical tensions escalate, there are growing risks that this contestation could erode multilateral participation.
This has already happened when it comes to trade—the only domain of the Index that registered a decrease in participation. Participation in the World Trade Organization’s multilateral framework for trade has been stagnant—if not worsening—since the latest round of multilateral trade talks effectively ended in 2015. The ongoing failure to advance multilateral negotiations on a more equitable global trading system can thus be seen as a negative sign for multilateralism. Moreover, even within the existing framework, adherence to trade rules has fallen sharply over the past decade—a trend that could continue due to growing confrontations over trade between China and the West.
Nonetheless, one of the advantages of the Multilateralism Index is that it can capture trends beyond the most powerful countries that tend to shape the discourse around multilateralism. In many ways, multilateral participation has been sustained by small states, which make up the majority of the UN membership. As noted in a recent IPI report, these small states “broadly agree on the need to uphold international law, support multilateral cooperation and the institutions of global order, and adhere to the ‘purposes and principles’ of the UN Charter.” This is reflected in the 2024 Index of Countries’ Support to UN-Based Multilateralism (UN-Mi), which evaluates individual countries. According to the UN-Mi, three-quarters of the top 20 highest-ranked countries are small states (those with less than 10 million people).
Inclusivity of Women and Civil Society Increased
Broad improvements in the Index’s inclusivity dimension point to two trends. One is the steady growth in the number of NGOs engaging with various parts of the UN system. At the global level, this is visible in the rapid, steady increase in NGOs with consultative status with ECOSOC since the 1990s. More recently, it was showcased by the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, which allowed civil society organizations to share their priorities with UN officials and member states ahead of the Summit of the Future. This was the first time one of these conferences was directly attached to an intergovernmental process. At the same time, it remains difficult for civil society, particularly from the Global South, to influence decisions being made by government representatives hundreds or thousands of miles away.
The second trend captured by the Index is the increase in women’s representation across many UN bodies. In some areas, the UN has already achieved gender parity. For example, 54 percent of international staff in the UN Secretariat’s non-field entities are women, though field entities lag significantly behind at 31 percent. While starting from a much lower baseline, there has also been progress toward gender parity at more senior levels. Nonetheless, most of the UN system continues to fall short of gender parity. Intergovernmental bodies fall especially short, with less than a quarter of member states represented by women ambassadors in New York. Moreover, a truly gender-inclusive UN requires more than just increasing women’s representation. The UN still lacks the capacity, culture, and policies needed to mainstream gender equality effectively across the system.
Limitations in the indicators available make it more difficult to assess progress in other areas of inclusivity, including geographic inclusivity. There are some signs of progress. For example, the share of senior UN appointments from low-income countries has doubled over the past two decades. Yet deep inequities remain. One recent analysis found that only around a third of the individuals appointed to lead ten UN agencies since 2007 have been non-white. Some states have an informal lock on the leadership of certain agencies, as demonstrated most recently by the sixth consecutive appointment of a British citizen as under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs. Moreover, geographic inequities are baked into the structure of institutions like the Security Council and the international financial architecture, leading to growing calls for reform.
With Trump’s Reelection, What Lies Ahead?
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the Index is that multilateralism is not dead, but nor is it thriving. The multilateral system is struggling, but most states still see it as vital. So do most people.
The question is whether the trends identified in the Multilateral Index will continue in the years ahead. There is particular uncertainty around the impact of Trump’s reelection on indicators around participation in the multilateral system. Based on Trump’s first administration and proposals for his second, the US is likely to withdraw from or cut funding to parts of the UN system working on several domains of the Index, particularly human rights, climate action, and global health. This could lead to drops in participation in multilateral treaties (like the Paris Agreement) and financial contributions to key UN entities (like the World Health Organization and UN human rights office, both of which currently depend on the US as their biggest donor).
At the same time, disengagement from international organizations can take many forms. Fully exiting these organizations is the most extreme option but is relatively uncommon, even among states with right-wing populist governments. The more common route—including for the US during Trump’s first term—is to remain part of multilateral organizations while criticizing, extorting, or obstructing them from within.
Trump’s choice for UN ambassador suggests that this may also be the path taken during Trump’s second term. Project 2025, which Trump allies wrote as a blueprint for his second-term agenda, points in a similar direction. It suggests that “defending and protecting the American people and advancing their interests requires the United States to engage in a broad spectrum of bilateral and multilateral relationships, including participating in international organizations.” However, when these organizations do not serve US interests, it calls on the US to “be prepared to take appropriate steps in response, up to and including withdrawal.” This could accelerate the ongoing shift from multilateral cooperation toward multilateral contestation.
Much will depend on how the rest of the world reacts. The US alone does not determine the trajectory of the multilateral system, and other states could step up to fill in any gaps left by US disengagement. The Multilateralism Index shows that a critical mass of member states have remained committed to the multilateral system over the past decade, including during Trump’s previous term. It remains to be seen how they will react this time.
Albert Trithart is Editor and Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute. Adam Lupel is Vice President and COO of the International Peace Institute.
