UN chief backs academics’ call for global inequality panel

UN Secretary General António Guterres has urged world leaders to back the establishment of an International Panel on Inequality (IPI) proposed by leading academic inequality experts and backed by many hundreds of academics worldwide.

In remarks delivered on his behalf to by Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, to the high-level leaders’ event on the IPI, in New York on 23 September, he underlined that “Sustainable Development Goal 10 calls on us to reduce inequality within and among nations, yet we see breathtaking levels of income and wealth inequality, with the richest 10% of the world’s population now owning 75% of all wealth.”

Referring to the unequal levels of access to basic needs like housing, healthcare, nutrition and education and the inequality that sees some countries develop and prosper while others fall behind, he said the world is facing an emergency that “could get worse – and fast” with the advent of artificial intelligence technologies.

“The breakneck emergence of frontier technology – and the concentration of this technology’s wealth and power in a tiny number of hands – could unleash global inequality at a scale far beyond anything that we have seen.

“Unchecked inequality will further corrode democracy, as the ultra-wealthy and companies take control, wield outsized influence over the media and information landscape.

“And a world where only a few powerful countries can exert control over global security and the global economic architecture is a ticking time bomb.”

A recipe for conflict

Guterres backed the proposed IPI to bring together governments, economists, civil society and academics to provide objective, science-based analysis and evidence on the scale and drivers of inequality.

He said such a panel would put forward solutions to help policymakers address these inequalities.

“Investments in education, health, social protection and decent work. Fairer tax systems. Greater cooperation on development finance, trade and investment.

“Reforming the global financial architecture. Stronger enforcement of global rules, especially as corporations and high-net-worth individuals operate and relocate across borders. Achieving gender equality will be at the core of this.

“And ensuring that technology like artificial intelligence is accessible to – and governed by – all countries.”

He said the panel proposed by a committee led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz can “deepen our understanding of the problem – and the policy and political choices that we need to address it”.
“Let’s continue all efforts to end the inequality crisis.”

Inequality emergency declared

The proposal for the IPI emerged from the fulfilment of a request by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa to Stiglitz to lead a committee of global experts to prepare a report on global inequality, to be presented to the G20.

The final report, published in 2025, outlined the drivers of extreme inequality, its consequences and its solutions. The report declared an inequality emergency that is on a par with the climate emergency and should be treated as such.

Its main recommendation was for the establishment of a new IPI, which would play a similar role to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Following the launch of the report, the leaders of South Africa, Spain, Brazil and Norway voiced their support for the initiative.

Momentum for the panel accelerated following high-level Founding Committee meetings – the first taking place in Geneva in March 2026, the second in Johannesburg in April 2026 and the third in Barcelona in July 2026.

The proposal for an IPI has received support from the African Union (AU) and the 21 Member State signatories to the In Defence of Democracy initiative through the Barcelona Declaration of April 2026.

More than 700 economists and other leading inequality academics from around the world have also backed the proposal, and President Lula of Brazil recently highlighted the need for an IPI at the G7 meeting in Evian.

According to the International Inequalities Institute (III), based at the London School of Economics, central to momentum-building for an IPI is the need for “strong and sustained support from inequality experts and economists and civil society across the world”.

“The [Founding] Committee continues to welcome vocal support from inequality advocates to champion the need for the panel, building upon the Johannesburg meeting and other key moments to date,” a statement on the III website says.

Pressure on G20 to act

On 18 August Stiglitz and 40 senior UK academics, including many inequality and sustainability experts, stepped up the push for more momentum by signing an open letter calling on the new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham – whose first political commitment was to address the growing number of homeless people sleeping on the street in the UK – to demonstrate leadership on this issue on the world stage when the UK chairs the G20 in 2027.

“Inequality experts across the globe have made the case for the establishment of an International Panel on Inequality, which would serve as the world’s leading scientific authority on the issue – much like the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” the letter says.

An IPI would provide an independent, trusted global evidence base on the causes and consequences of inequality, alongside analysis of the policies that can reduce it, it added.

“Lending the UK’s support to an IPI would not only allow Burnham to expand on the Greater Manchester Independent Inequalities Commission [which he established as Mayor of Manchester before becoming prime minister] and his efforts to address inequalities throughout the UK but also cement the organising principles of his politics globally,” the letter says.

“That’s why 40 leading academics and experts are today calling on Burnham to ensure that the UK is a key supporter of an IPI at the UN General Assembly in New York this September.”

Reconciling sustainability and well-being

In June the World Inequality Lab launched a Global Justice Report: A plan for equality and prosperity within planetary boundaries, during the opening of the World Inequality Conference.

The World Inequality Lab, made up of a separate group of 40 co-directors, coordinators, research fellows, research assistants and other staff based primarily at the Paris School of Economics and the University of Berkeley, California, works in close coordination with more than 200 researchers – the WID Fellows – based in institutions around the world.

The Global Justice report’s main conclusion is that a global transformation that reconciles planetary habitability and high standards of well-being for all is possible – as long as three conditions are simultaneously met:

• Fast decarbonisation of energy systems is required.

• A major shift away from overconsumption towards “sufficiency”. This would involve a sharp reduction in labour hours and raw materials extraction, along with big changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use and forest cover.

• Financing and politically sustaining decarbonisation and sufficiency, which will require a drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth and power, both between countries and within them.

The report advocates a redistribution of wealth globally over the next 75 years on a scale similar to the reduction achieved in Western and Nordic Europe over the 20th century.

It recommends that by 2100 the bottom 50% wealth share should rise from 2% to 30%, while the top 0.001% share (billionaire class) falls from 6% to 0.05 %.

Inequality linked to slower growth

Writing in Nature magazine on 9 September, Stiglitz, along with five other experts – Adriana E Abenur, co-president of the Global Fund for a New Economy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS and an under-secretary-general at the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland; Jyati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, US; Imran Valodia, a professor of economics and director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Wanga Zembe-Mkabile, professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape School of Public Health, Cape Town, South Africa – said increasing inequality demands action.

“A growing body of research links higher income inequality to lower social mobility, poorer health outcomes and slower economic growth. Unequal access to education, health care, housing and finance shapes the opportunities that direct people’s lives.

“Yet, all this knowledge has not produced a policy response.”

One reason was political, as inequalities create powerful beneficiaries. Another was practical: a gap between science and policy.

“Evidence on inequality is dispersed across disciplines and institutions. Research on policy effectiveness – showing what has worked, in which contexts and through which mechanisms – is insufficiently synthesised and often inaccessible.

“What’s needed is an independent scientific body mirroring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“This would periodically and systematically assess evidence on the scale, nature, drivers and consequences of inequality. It would also evaluate evidence on policies and synthesise the conclusions from the successes and failures of different countries.”

Stiglitz and the co-authors of the Nature article said there is sufficient consensus on the broad picture of growing wealth inequality gaps and their impact to justify urgent actions.

But to undertake the right ones, policymakers and researchers must have better and more reliable data and a greater understanding of the processes that create inequality and their consequences.

“The IPI would address four areas: the measurement of inequality; its drivers; its consequences; and the policies that are available to address it.”

To see more articles addressing SDG 10: Reducing Inequality, see our Global Challenges section in our SDGs HUB.