“Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that Delivers for All.” This was the theme of the just-concluded 81st session of the UN General Assembly.
In her address to world leaders during the UN high-level debate, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley gave a sharp diagnosis of what ails multilateralism today. The world is living through polycrises created by the challenges of climate, war, and unprecedented material inequalities, she said. Yet, international cooperation through the UN system has consistently failed to convert knowledge into action, to turn principle into practice and global capacity into solidarity.
Mottley also assessed, both explicitly and tacitly, the condition of communication rights in the world, with rich reflections on voice, representation, knowledge, and truth:
First, the global majority’s lack of voice in the Security Council. This body “still has 15 members, five of them permanent […] Africa, with 54 States, has no permanent seat […]. Small island developing States equally confront threats that now reach squarely into the Council’s mandate and yet despite constituting a quarter of the world’s States, they have no assured representation within the Council.”* The Security Council remains a space where a few voices are amplified, as the rest are silenced.
Second, threats posed by artificial intelligence raised by various others at and beyond the General Assembly. Mottley underlined the risks of exclusion, exploitation, surveillance, the distortion of truth, reproduction of discrimination, widening surveillance, and spreading falsehoods.
Let’s unpack one, that is, surveillance. This is about the right to privacy and freedom of expression that is essential for democratic participation. Importantly, Mottley urged members not to “allow a new technological age to reproduce old hierarchies of access and power” – essentially, support for some form of AI regulation.
Third, the misrepresentation of Africa on world maps. Maps are not neutral; they are media forms that shape knowledge, identity, and power. “The mindset that established, justified, and sustained slavery is the same mindset that sustains the iniquities and inequities within the power structures of [the UN] and within the international financial architecture. It is the same mindset that caused a global map to remain grossly inaccurate on the size of Africa for centuries. As if the true size of Africa would intimidate the rest of the world into understanding its power.” This distortion undermines the right to access to accurate information, with implications on how African States and people are perceived and treated.
A common thread across the three dimensions is communicative injustice, pitting a powerful minority (of States and corporations) against the marginalized global majority. Mottley brings clarity on how the injustices are interwoven in a global order that has failed to live up to its promise. Restoring trust requires enabling communication rights for all.
*Emphasis added by Comment author.
Top image: Sculpture “The World Turned Upside Down” by Mark Wallinger outside the London School of Economics. Credit: It’s No Game on Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0