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The 20th century was marked by the deadliest conflicts in all human history, but those vast tragedies also gave rise to a tremendous idealism about what we humans can do to alleviate the suffering and ills befalling us.

The UN system — established at the close of the Second World War — exemplifies the ideals of peace, freedom, equality and human rights that we tried to live by, but admittedly did not do an astounding job defending.

Today, we lament the UN’s near-absence from the greatest threats to peace, such as the war in Ukraine, forcing us to question its continued relevance. UN agencies like the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees deserve great credit for the extensive support they have given the less fortunate, but we can all agree that, as we see the continued poverty, hunger and suffering present in our world, we can certainly do better.

Our world has changed, and so have the methods and opportunities to distribute aid, to measure its effectiveness, and to tackle new phenomena. There was a time when we sought to measure the efficacy of aid solely by looking at the overhead administrative costs compared with the actual aid delivered, but we learned that the most important factor really is how well the aid is targeted and what objectives it fulfills.

Treating a cancer patient by pumping his body full of the most expensive medication is not the same as figuring out precisely what targeted treatment will actually make a difference and delivering it in an efficient manner. When it comes to “treating” our world’s ills — poverty or the environment — we must similarly harness the power of new technologies, methods, tracking and self-reporting to deliver aid that is exponentially more beneficial.

The combination of a changing world and our past failures requires us to rethink our approach and employ smarter methods, to reposit the problem and find intelligent and timely new solutions. Poverty and hunger no longer fit the cliche of the malnourished African child of the 1980s — there is widespread poverty and hunger in the world’s most developed countries, with almost 40 million poor in the US alone. Equally, democratic values and freedoms have been degraded throughout the Western world — there is no longer an enlightened West and a “rest of the world” to be “civilised.” Just as we need a new vision for our global economic order, we need a new vision of how we collect, consider and target aid toward those who need it most.

With technology, every penny spent is traceable and can be made accountable. Modern methods of management should allow us to minimize the question marks we always retain about the ethics and sincerity of those who run aid budgets.

Consider that the UN’s regular budget today lies around $3 billion and world military expenditure represents more than $2 trillion today.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general himself, warned about such a trend in his 1961 Farewell Address.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” he said.

Wars have become moneymaking machines, just as advertising guns to kill people nets American firearm manufactures some $50 billion annually.

We must ask ourselves if both industries can be sustained at such levels were we to remove the fabricated fear associated with their sales by simply doing a better job at helping those in need.

With technology, every penny spent is traceable and can be made accountable. Modern methods of management should allow us to minimise the question marks we always retain about the ethics and sincerity of those who run aid budgets. As we have suggested many times before, a small tax on global financial transactions would suffice to fund programs of several hundred billion dollars annually to tackle poverty, hunger and the environment.

So let us finally inaugurate the 21st century, reinvent how we tackle the fundamental challenges humanity continues to face, and make every individual on this planet a participant, a beneficiary and an overseer of that aid. As inspiration, let us hold up the brave and rousing words of Amanda Gorman’s 2021 Inaugural Poem.

“When day comes, we step out of the shade,
Aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked with Saudi petroleum ministers Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani from 1959 to 1967. He led the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972 to 1981 and served with the Arab League observer delegation to the UN from 1981 to 1983.

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