Published in The New York Times

By Darren Walker

As New York welcomes the first high-level session of the United Nations General Assembly in three years, there is a sense of urgency, excitement and renewed hope. Hope for a deeper, more inclusive level of global cooperation given the interconnected complexities and crises facing our world.

For billions of people, the stakes could not be higher.

Our international order—the rules-based system through which the world’s nations pursue global peace and development—is crashing into the limits of its founding vision. What our predecessors built some eight decades ago, after the Second World War, is in desperate need of repair—but it remains essential, and salvageable.

We must reform the very architecture of our global order—the blueprint for our system of international relations and development finance.

The global community can start immediately by releasing more existing resources, currently tied up in development organizations, and by listening to and learning from a new vanguard of inspiring leaders across the Global South.