Last week, the rich and powerful gathered once again at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Swiss ski resort that has hosted an annual meeting of the world’s super-rich for more than half a century. The setting was familiar, and the guest list predictable. The language was emptier than ever.
According to the WEF website, the leaders came together this year “to engage in forward-looking discussions,” “listen to one another,” and “problem solve around shared challenges.” The theme of the gathering – “a spirit of dialogue” – was so vague it bordered on parody.
But while the rhetoric was hollow, the power and wealth concentrated in Davos this week was anything but.
The WEF elite came together at a moment when the world is fracturing – in terms of geopolitics, economics, and the health of the planet. The United States is looking more like a lone ranger than ever. Concentrations of wealth have never been so extreme. Climate catastrophe is already upon us. And the former, go-to source of global consensus-building – the United Nations – has been sidelined by funding cuts, political sabotage, and open contempt by the nation that hosts its global headquarters.
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Before he headed to Davos this week, U.S. President Donald Trump told a reporter that his proposed new “Board of Peace” “might” replace the United Nations, which “has never lived up to its potential.” The comment echoed his shocking – but typical — statement from a week earlier, when he told journalists, “I don’t need international law.”
The danger here isn’t simply that multilateralism is failing. It’s that empty forums that openly support the elite 1% like WEF are positioning themselves as substitutes.
The United Nations was formed in a Cold War model following World War II, so by any measure it’s extremely unequal even though each country is a member. The richest still hold all the power, and work for their own benefit. But the idea of handing power over to WEF only intensifies this inequality. For more than half a century, the Forum has been nothing but a stage-managed gathering of wealthy men in blue suits congratulating themselves while delivering nothing for the global majority.
The results speak for themselves. Today, the wealthiest 0.001% alone – fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires – control three times more wealth than half of humanity combined. Billionaire wealth is now higher than any time in history . And yet the political influence of the oligarchs at WEF forces the global majority to reduce corporate taxes to benefit multinationals and billionaires’ through extractivism. This same class of super-rich supports regressive consumption taxes on citizens from developing and poor nations to service illegitimate debt. They allow tax heavens to thrive while billions go to bed hungry, have no access to quality public goods and service, healthcare and education.
The global majority is done being lectured to by oligarchs who fly in private jets to gather in Davos to sip champagne and discuss “global solutions” that will only serve to drive their profits up even further. The world does not need WEF and its ilk to discuss the solutions they don’t have. People’s movements from the global majority, have solutions to global crises and are showing the real leadership needed to chart a way forward.
In one such effort in November 2025, movements from across the world gathered at the We the 99 People’s Summit in Johannesburg as a counterpoint to the G20 summit happening nearby, where the global majority set out a ten-point, people-centred roadmap to build fairer economies and protect the planet.
The plan is not utopian. It’s grounded in material reality and democratic power. It calls for taxing the super-rich and big tech – an obvious solution that the super-rich at WEF choose to ignore every year. For decades, the richest 1%, billionaires and financial speculators have extracted enormous wealth while contributing little in return. Their fair share of tax is enough to fund quality education, healthcare and decent wages for all.
The roadmap calls for tax havens and shell companies to be shut down. Every year, billions are hidden offshore while public services are starved of resources. This is theft. It’s time to end corruption and keep wealth where it belongs – serving people, not protecting obscene fortunes.
The plan demands the protection of civic space and cultural rights. Oligarchs and billionaires are buying media power, manipulating digital platforms and influencing laws to silence dissent and capture democracy. This is democracy for sale, and we reject it.
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And the plan demands an end to all forms of occupation and genocide. No system can claim legitimacy while it is built on violence, dispossession and death. The right to land, life and liberation is non-negotiable. These are obvious and urgent solutions the world needs. But the oligarchs in Davos will never discuss them – because they’re cashing in massively on the crises that are causing humanity to suffer.
The future will not be decided at the bottom of a ski run in Switzerland. Legitimacy doesn’t come from wealth or exclusive invitations. It comes from people. From participation, truth, accountability, and collective power.
Davos has had decades to prove its worth, and it has failed. The global majority has already started to build something better. The remaking of multilateralism and a new global economic order must come from here.
Jenny Ricks is General Secretary of the Fight Inequality Alliance.