The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on Sunday called for reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in order to transform power relations between countries.

"Within the framework of the global economy and finances, there is an unfair and systematic distortion in favor of the rich countries which, naturally, has generated enormous frustration in the developing world," Guterres denounced at the G7 summit - seven of the world's largest economies, representing more than half of the world's net wealth - in Hiroshima, Japan.

In his speech, he called for a reform of the UN Security Council and the two major international institutions resulting from the Bretton Woods agreement in 1945, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, in order to transform once and for all the power, financial and moral relations that have sunk developing countries into debt.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations considered that the recovery plans for the Covid-19 pandemic are a clear example of the huge difference that separates these two types of countries.

The G7 countries, with a total population of 772 million people, received 280,000 million dollars (around 260,000 million euros) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while the entire African continent, home to 1.3 billion people, received only 34,000 million dollars (around 31,000 million euros).

In Guterres' view, this difference represents a moral failure "however much they have followed the rules in this regard", which is why he believes that "there is something fundamentally wrong with the regulations themselves".

The UN Secretary General thus declared himself surprised by the response to an economic crisis that has left 52 countries in the world on the brink of bankruptcy and without access to debt relief policies.

Guterres considered that this whole situation stems from the power relations established mainly after the Second World War, through the Bretton Woods system and the UN Security Council, the organization's highest executive body, burdened by the veto that the five permanent members can impose on any decision under discussion.

"Many things have changed since 1945. The global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unfair. The economic impacts of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have shown that it has failed to fulfill its essential role as a global safety net," Guterres lamented.

Therefore, "it is time to reform the Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions to redistribute power according to the reality of today's world," he said.

As a short-term solution, Guterres once again insisted on his proposal for a Global Package of Stimuli for Sustainable Development to increase debt financing terms, for which cooperation between multilateral development banks is needed.

In this regard, Guterres called on the international community to follow the example of Japan, which in April this year pledged to double the percentage of the International Monetary Fund's Special Withdrawal Rights monetary reserves - an international reserve asset that supplements the official reserves of member countries - which will be reallocated by up to 40% to the poorest countries.

"I think everything is very clear [...]. When I say that there is a growing awareness among developed countries that they are not doing enough to reform obsolete institutions or, much less, alleviate the frustrations of the Global South (the world zone that includes most of the countries of the southern hemisphere, including all of Africa and South Asia) with an effective policy of solidarity. (Observer)