UN Necessary
Nudhara Yusuf and Daniel Perell of the Coalition for the United Nations We Need—also with the Stimson Center's Global Governance Innovation Network, and the Baha’i International Community—look ahead to the UN’s 2024 Summit of the Future through a series of intimate and penetrating discussions with many of the international figures contributing to the Summit’s shaping.
Join them as they talk with people from all regions of the world, and with diverse international service experience, as they consult on how the Summit of the Future can realize its promise.
UN Necessary
Looking back to look ahead: Dan and Nudhara go to Sweden, Kenya, and UN80
Recorded in part in Stockholm, Sweden during the Global Challenges Foundation Partner Days, this episode of UN Necessary takes the podcast on the road for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about what is—and isn’t—necessary for the United Nations at a pivotal moment for global governance and multilateral reform.
Hosts Nudhara Yusuf and Daniel Perell draw on rapid-fire conversations with diplomats, policy experts, and civil society leaders to reflect on debates shaping the UN’s future. Though recorded months earlier, these discussions offer timely insight into issues now central to the post–Summit of the Future landscape, including bureaucracy and institutional reform, inclusion and representation, competition versus cooperation, and the UN’s evolving role as a convening and norm-setting institution.
Set against ongoing processes such as the Pact for the Future follow-up and the UN80 initiative, the episode looks beyond recent milestones to ask a forward-looking question: How can the UN adapt its existing “body parts” to meet the demands of the decades ahead?
The episode closes on a more personal note, as Dan reflects on spending three months in rural Kenya with his family—an experience that challenges conventional ideas of prosperity and development.