The United Nations at 80:

the Future of Multilateral Order

Keynote Address at Wuhan University, 18 October 2025

Miguel de Serpa Soares

 

Distinguished colleagues, esteemed faculty members, honored guests, and dear students,

It is a great privilege to stand before you today, at the opening of this important conference devoted to the theme: The United Nations at 80: World Order, International Law, and the Future of Multilateralism.

We gather here not only to commemorate the past, but also to ask a crucial question: what lies ahead for multilateralism and for an international order based on international law?

Eighty years have passed since the signing of the Charter of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. Eighty years – the span of a lifetime – and yet the Charter’s words remain alive in the halls of diplomacy, in the judgments of international courts, and in the aspirations of peoples around the globe.

Today, we have the responsibility – and the opportunity – to renew that legacy.