23 September 2025, Addis Ababa – Ending a months-long hiatus, Secretary-General H.E. Manssour Bin Mussallam has launched the second season of The Third Way – Live with the SG podcast, which airs Sundays at 4:30 PM East Africa Time. He spoke candidly about the turbulent global economy, citing widespread tariffs and shifts in development aid as key sources of uncertainty.
The Secretary-General described 2025 as a challenging year for multilateralism, signalling the end of the old certainties that have defined the world for decades. This widespread economic instability, he noted, directly impacts the organisation’s work, causing delays in Member States’ contributions to the regular budget.
He argued that beyond immediate financial pressures, a more profound shift is underway: the post-Cold War order, once presumed permanent, is now in its death throes. This seismic change is creating global tremors, signalling the collapse of the old system. Yet, he suggested a positive outcome; this disruption offers the Greater South and humanity as a whole an opportunity to build a new, more equitable, sustainable, and solidarity-based world order.
The Ten Sovereignties: A Blueprint for an Independent South
Central to his address was the detailed framework of Ten Sovereignties, presented as essential pillars for the Greater South to achieve true self-determination.
- Knowledge and Educational Sovereignty: He called for epistemological sovereignty, urging nations to move beyond imported models and embrace their own indigenous knowledge. To think from one’s own perspective, he argued, is the most authentic act of freedom. This extends to education, where he advocated a radical shift from rote learning to a problem-posing pedagogy that equips youth with critical thinking skills.
- Economic and Environmental Sovereignty: Using the coffee industry as an example, he highlighted systemic inequity: the North reaps substantial profits from processing, while Southern producers receive a minute fraction. The solution is for the South to build its own high-value industries and strengthen regional markets. Paired with this is ecological sovereignty, which reframes the climate crisis as an opportunity for development that avoids green colonialism by ensuring the green transition creates jobs and prosperity within the Greater South.
- Sovereignty of Dignity and Self-Sufficiency: Further pillars focus on human dignity. Sanitary sovereignty, a lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for investment in local health research and production. Similarly, food and infrastructure sovereignty are essential to ensure nations can feed their people and connect their markets without relying on the infrastructure and priorities of the North.
Planting the Seeds of a New World
The demise of the old order is certain, he declared. The role of the Greater South, however, is not to be the gravediggers of the decaying system, but to plant the seeds of a new one that benefits all humanity.
His final remarks framed the challenge as a monumental but necessary task: “What remains to us to do collectively from our greater self is to ensure that the outcome of this unmaking is not worse than what has been unmade and to work together in forging, in building, in consolidating the world that our peoples want and that humanity in its entirety deserves.”
For a complete understanding of this vision, the foundational A Letter from Greater South, outlining the full blueprint for The Ten Sovereignties, is available in English and Spanish here:https://www.cartameridional.com/english-version/
