In December, The World Today and the Financial Times invited school students aged 16-19 to write a short question in answer to this question: ‘If you were UN Secretary-General for a day, what would be your first action, and why?’ The judges, Lord Jim O’Neil, Chair of Chatham House, Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of the FT, and Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, selected this entry by Kate Anderson.
It is 2019, and I believe the United Nations is no longer fit for purpose. Therefore, if I was UN Secretary-General for a day, my first action would be to convene a General Assembly of the young – for it is the youth who have the greatest stake in the future – and I would ask them to revisit the UN charter with fresh eyes.
