The UN matters—and if it fails, falters, or fades away it would fundamentally erode the stability of an already fragile global order. Join us for the Washington launch of the new report, UN 2030: Rebuilding Order in a Fragmenting World. Kevin Rudd has spent the past two years conducting a review of the United Nations system as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), which covered sixteen areas ranging from counterterrorism to administrative reform. 

His chair’s report argues that we tend to take the UN for granted, overlooking the reality that its continued existence is not inevitable. The UN, while not yet broken, is in trouble. The report concludes, however, that the UN is capable of reinventing itself. This requires not one-off reforms but a continual process of reinvention to ensure the institution is responding to the policy challenges of our time.

Carnegie President William J. Burns moderated.

This event was cosponsored by the Asia Society Policy Institute, the United Nations Foundation, and the Better World Campaign.

Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd is president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as Australia’s twenty-sixth prime minister and as foreign minister. As chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, Rudd recently led a review of the UN system. He is chair of the Global Partnership on Sanitation and Water for All and a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons. He is a distinguished fellow at Chatham House in London, a distinguished statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and a distinguished fellow at the Paulson Institute in Chicago. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, serves as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and co-chairs the China Global Affairs Council of the World Economic Forum.

William J. Burns

Bill Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ambassador Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a thirty-three-year diplomatic career. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, career ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become deputy secretary of state.