Although the temper tantrums of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu dominated mass media coverage of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, which opened in September 2026, the event also included the announcement of a far more significant matter: a campaign to address the problem of worldwide economic inequality.
On September 24, standing in for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Ronald Lamola, South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, told General Assembly delegates that "the promise of democracy and international cooperation wanes when we cannot demonstrate that they can address inequality and insecurity." Thus, "together with Brazil, Norway, and Spain, South Africa calls on this Assembly to throw its weight behind the establishment" of an International Panel on Inequality (IPI). Based on the model of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPI would research inequality within and between countries and develop policies to close the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
That gap is enormous. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and other specialists have recently reported, "the richest 10 percent of adults globally receives more than half (53 percent) of the world's income, whereas the poorest half receives 8 percent." When it comes to wealth, that "is even more concentrated, with the richest 10 percent owning around three-quarters of global wealth while the poorest half owns just 2 percent." And "almost two-thirds of people live in countries where inequality is rising." In turn, this economic inequality leads to "unequal access to education, health care, housing and finance," factors shaping "the opportunities that direct people's lives."
The speech at the General Assembly, as well as the specialists' report, originated with developments within the G20, an international forum of nations with advanced and emerging economies seeking to coordinate global economic policy. In 2025, when the South African government held the presidency of the G20, it commissioned a study of global inequality by independent experts and chaired by Stiglitz. Appearing last November, the study maintained that "inequality is one of the most urgent concerns in the world today," and that "combating it is necessary and possible." Indeed, according to the study, the inequality emergency was on a par with the climate emergency, and an IPI, once established, would gather information on the problem and propose solutions to it.
Recently, the campaign for a global response to global economic inequality has picked up momentum. By mid-September 2026, when the UN General Assembly session was underway, more than 1,500 economists and academics from more than 100 countries had signed an open letter backing the creation of an International Panel on Inequality. Among the high-profile signatories were former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu, and numerous other prominent economists, including Thomas Piketty, Mariana Mazzucao, and Jayati Ghosh. In the letter, they maintained that "extreme concentrations of income and wealth translate into undemocratic concentrations of power, unravelling trust in our societies and polarizing our politics."
Ghosh remarked: "India's experience tells us everything we need to know about why an International Panel on Inequality is needed. One of the world's fast-growing economies is also one of its most unequal and its extraordinary wealth sits alongside profound deprivation."
Meanwhile, the IPI proposal drew important support from other quarters. At a BRICS summit during the second week in September, Brazil and South Africa put the issue on the meeting's agenda, resulting in a final communique that called for "concrete steps" to "establish an international panel on inequality." Later in the month, 38 former heads of state and government from the Club of Rome published an open letter urging world leaders to establish the IPI. They included Germany's Olaf Scholz, Ireland's Leo Varadkar, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, Malawi's Joyce Banda, and New Zealand's Helen Clark.
This buildup culminated not only in the South African address to the General Assembly, but in a side event this September at the United Nations, to which all UN member states were invited by the governments of Brazil, Norway, South Africa, and Spain to show their support for the creation of the IPI. At the gathering, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, delivered a passionate speech, declaring: "Greed is man-made, and therefore . . . it can be unman-made." She was joined that day by delegations from other nations that displayed their backing for the IPI venture, included Germany, Japan, Bangladesh, Uruguay, and Mexico.
The campaigners hope to generate enough international support to get the UN General Assembly, during this session, to pass a resolution formally establishing the new panel on international inequality.
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