UN Secretary General Proposes “New Social Contract” to Combat “Inequality”
During a keynote speech delivered virtually to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Foundation on July18, UN Secretary General António Guterres proposed a new worldwide “social contract” that he called a New Global Deal. The name Guterres selected for his initiative harkens back to the original New Deal, a series of socialist programs enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 as a supposed antidote to the Great Depression.
But instead of an economic depression justifying the New Global Deal, Guterres identified “inequality” — highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic — as the social ill that must be remedied by the New Global Deal. And while he did not specifically state that the UN must implement this deal, his language suggested a supranational approach to putting his proposals into effect.