A virus crosses a border without a passport.
Carbon dioxide doesn’t stop at customs.
A cyberattack can begin in one country, use infrastructure in another and cause damage somewhere else.
Yet much of the world’s political machinery is still organised around national borders.
That creates a problem.
The United Nations’ latest figures show that global forced displacement remains enormous. At the end of 2025, UNHCR recorded 41.6 million refugees, 9 million asylum-seekers and 68.7 million people displaced within their own countries by conflict or violence.
Those numbers are not simply a migration story.
They are also a story about war, poverty, governance, climate pressures, infrastructure, diplomacy and international cooperation.
The same pattern appears elsewhere.
Climate change is global but climate policies are largely national.
Hunger can be driven by local poverty but also by global commodity prices, conflict and disrupted supply chains.
AI can be developed by a company in one country and deployed to millions of people elsewhere.
So here’s the strange part.
We know many of our biggest problems are interconnected, yet we often design solutions in separate boxes.
One ministry deals with health.
Another deals with the economy.
Another deals with education.
Another deals with immigration.
Another deals with the environment.
Then everyone wonders why the problems keep crossing the boundaries.
The answer isn’t necessarily to create one giant world government.
That would introduce an entirely different set of problems.
The more interesting possibility is better cooperation between systems that already exist.
The UN’s peace and development work, for example, increasingly involves partnerships with regional organisations and other actors. The same principle appears in climate negotiations, global health and food security.
But cooperation has a weakness: it can be slow.
Large institutions have to reconcile different national interests. Consensus can take time. Political leaders change. Funding changes. Crises move faster than meetings.
So perhaps global governance needs both cooperation and flexibility.
Smaller coalitions could move faster on specific problems while remaining connected to broader international standards.
Technology could improve information sharing.
Cities, businesses, universities and civil society could contribute alongside governments.
And national governments could recognise that cooperation isn’t necessarily a surrender of sovereignty. Sometimes it is simply a more efficient way of protecting national interests in a world where the problems themselves are international.
This is one of the central ideas running through How We Can Fix Things: Unlocking Solutions for a Better World.
The question isn’t whether every country should agree on everything.
It is whether countries can cooperate effectively on the things no country can fix alone.
Because a border can be politically powerful.
It is not, however, a wall against consequences.
If the problem ignores borders, perhaps the solution needs to do the same.
Which global problem do you think is currently being made worse because governments are trying to solve it nationally rather than collectively?
#GlobalGovernance, #InternationalCooperation, #UnitedNations, #Migration, #Refugees, #GlobalProblems, #Diplomacy, #Politics, #GlobalSecurity, #HowWeCanFixThings
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