inclusiveness
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GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: ‘The scale and urgency of our challenges calls for more than incremental reform, it requires transformation’
CIVICUS speaks with Stirling Dean, Chair and Executive Director of the United Institutions Foundation, about the deficits of the global governance system and civil society’s proposals for reform.The United Institutions Foundation administers the institutional development of United Institutions, a planned new global institution for international cooperation between the public, private and civil sectors.
What’s the current state of multilateralism?
Multilateralism has served as the foundation of the global rule-based order for over 70 years and still does today. However, it is currently under severe strain and being undermined by a host of interconnected challenges.
First and foremost, our world is facing a host of escalating global challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and inequality, which threaten the wellbeing of people and the planet. The multilateral system and many of our institutions are chronically overstretched due to the sheer number, complexity and scale of these challenges. Further, meeting the day-to-day demands coming from these challenges takes priority, making it difficult to tackle the root causes. Countries are also falling far behind in realising the new multilateral agreements that we have put in place to address these challenges, including the 2030 Agenda that established the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
At the same time, we face a deteriorating international security environment, armed conflicts and deep divisions within and between nations. We are moving towards a more multipolar world with renewed distrust and competition between major powers. We are also seeing a rise in populism, nationalism, protectionism, misinformation and deliberate attempts to undermine democratic values around the world, which are also negatively impacting on multilateralism and international cooperation.
Civic space is furthermore shrinking around the world, as many countries work to undermine human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and assembly. This is in direct opposition to the principles of the 2030 Agenda as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been signed and ratified by those same countries. These practices affect not only people at the local and national levels but also have repercussions for the governments themselves, for their relations with other nations and for multilateralism as a whole. Moreover, they negatively affect the realisation of our global agendas, which affects us all.
Moreover, we have paid far too little attention to the need to strengthen the multilateral system. Our current structures and institutions were largely built for the circumstances of the last century and many are now outdated and haven’t been upgraded and adequately equipped for the complex interlinked challenges and political realities of today’s world. They also don’t adequately account for the much larger set of stakeholder groups that are engaged in global affairs today. Lack of connectivity, integration, inclusion, alignment and coordination across governance structures, mechanisms, sectors, policy areas and geographies are significant challenges.
Financing is a key challenge as well. Our global systems and institutions are chronically underfunded and development cooperation continues to be insufficient to meet demand, as only a handful of countries are delivering on the official development assistance target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income.
On the positive side, the United Nations (UN) system is still making a tangible difference for countries and millions of people around the world. Countries did come together at the UN to adopt new global agendas, and to a large extent are committed to engaging with each other through multilateral institutions. They are also aware of the governance challenges we face and are actively looking at ways to turn the tide.
Moreover, non-state stakeholders across sectors and geographies are engaged and committed to addressing our challenges and realising these agendas. They are also calling for strengthened inclusion in global decision-making and working to hold governments to account.
Last but not least, according to surveys conducted by the UN and other institutions, the vast majority of the world’s people still strongly support and believe in international cooperation and multilateralism. And that is essential.
Are non-state stakeholders sufficiently included in key deliberations at the UN?
Non-state stakeholders have been engaged in UN deliberations since its founding and have been quite instrumental in helping drive many of the developments and decisions that states have made at the UN. However, due to the intergovernmental nature of the UN there have always been barriers to stakeholder engagement, and participation has been limited. Moreover, the inclusion of non-state stakeholders is often treated as an afterthought and regarded by many as mere tokenism.
To a large extent non-state stakeholders believe that their level of inclusion and participation in UN deliberations is completely insufficient. They argue that when it does take place, it is mostly limited to two-minute interventions with no follow up, which does not constitute meaningful engagement, debate or collaboration, and I tend to agree. For decades, they have called for greater and more meaningful engagement, and with the ever-growing number of stakeholders engaged in global affairs, this call is today stronger than ever.
What can be done to improve things?
There have been multiple attempts to strengthen working methods between UN member states and non-state stakeholders and to increase inclusion and participation in UN deliberations, but, with few exceptions, the resulting changes have most often been minor due to built-in resistance, constraints related to the intergovernmental nature of the organisation and pushback from various member states.
However, there are proposals for reform worth considering. These include the recommendations made by the Unmute Civil Society initiative, led by the governments of Costa Rica and Denmark, and the proposed establishment of a UN civil society envoy, supported by multiple civil society campaigns.
UN member states could also explore the plethora of already established engagement methodologies used by individual UN agencies, civil society, the private sector and some national and local governments. These include comprehensive e-consultation platforms, hearings, co-creation workshops, civil society mechanisms and focus groups, just to mention a few. There are literally dozens of opportunities that could be explored.
We will have to wait and see what proposals make it into the Pact for the Future, the outcome document of the upcoming Summit of the Future. Given past experiences, if any changes are made, they will most likely be incremental and nowhere near what is needed. Also, while the scope of the outcome document does include an important proposal for increased inclusion of youth, it does not address the need to strengthen inclusion and participation of all stakeholder groups. I hope this will change during the upcoming negotiations of the zero draft of the document.
What’s at stake in the Summit of the Future?
UN member states are holding the Summit of the Future with the aim of agreeing on a range of reforms and investments to reinvigorate multilateralism, strengthen international cooperation and accelerate progress in realising global development agendas.
A host of reform proposals have been put forth and are being considered for inclusion in the summit and its outcome document. These include possible reforms to the UN, reform of the international financial architecture, strengthening global emergency response, adopting a new agenda for peace, strengthening digital cooperation and accounting for the interests of future generations in global decision making, among others. It is a tall agenda but a very necessary one. Each of the proposed reforms is important and will be required in helping us turn the tide.
Concerningly, however, numerous mission-critical governance challenges, reforms and investments, some of which were included in the UN Secretary-General’s ‘Our Common Agenda’ report, were not included in the agreed scope of the summit outcome document. These include realising a whole-of-society approach, breaking silos, investing in our capacity to implement integrated approaches, realising a more networked and inclusive multilateralism and strengthening inclusion and participation of all stakeholder groups in global decision making, among others. If these issues are not addressed, many of our governance challenges will remain and negatively affect our ability to achieve the results that we need.
What is United Institutions, and how can it help improve multilateralism?
Strengthening multilateralism and international cooperation to address our global challenges and realising our agendas will require a lot more than the proposals currently being considered for the Pact for the Future. The scale and urgency of our challenges also calls for more than incremental reforms, it requires transformation.
As outlined in ‘Our Common Agenda’, we need a more networked, inclusive and effective multilateralism that involves all stakeholder constituencies and enables us to work in a more comprehensive and integrated manner. This requires an investment in the connectivity and capacity of the global ecosystem of mechanisms and stakeholders beyond the UN. It also requires that a host of system-wide governance challenges are solved, including silos, fragmentation and lack of inclusion. It would also require us to work together across sectors to build trust, strengthen relations, realise integrated approaches and establish global solidarity. These are functions the UN is not designed for and are not addressed by the UN reform proposals being considered for the Pact for the Future. Fragmented ad hoc solutions will not suffice either. Getting there will instead require strategic investments into functions and capabilities of the multilateral system and the global governance architecture that complement existing structures.
The United Institutions is a planned new global institution, integrator platform and permanent world forum for global cooperation between the public, private and civil society sectors, being developed for the international community. It is intended to serve as a complement to the UN. It is developed with a view to strengthen governance, cooperation and collective action, and to support and enable the international community to realise a more networked and inclusive multilateralism, build out the institutional framework at the global level and link sectors, mechanisms and processes together across policy areas and geographies.
The platform will provide a unifying charter, enabling environment and infrastructure for cooperation at the global level, and is designed to work in coordination with existing mechanisms at the international and national levels. It will enable existing structures and institutions to strengthen their interconnectivity, coordination and alignment in a coherent and integrated manner, and to transform institutional silos and fragmentation into systemic and sustained cooperation, integration and collective action. Among its functions, it is also intended to support and help transform working methods and relations between non-state stakeholders and UN member states, and to strengthen civic engagement and civic space at the global level.
Both the plans for the United Institutions and the proposals being considered for the Pact for the Future are aimed at strengthening multilateralism and international cooperation, but they don’t address the same needs and instead complement each other. The United Institutions is currently in preparatory development ahead of its institutional formation and operationalisation. To learn more about this, please visit www.unitedinstitutions.org.
Get in touch with the United Institutions Foundation through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@ui_foundation on Twitter.
This interview was conducted as part of the ENSURED Horizon research project funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. -
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: ‘The Summit of the Future is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives’
CIVICUS speaks with Dr Richard Ponzio, Director of the Global Governance, Security and Justice Programme at the Stimson Center, about the deficits of the global governance system and civil society’s proposals for reform.The Stimson Center is a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank that promotes international peace and security and shared prosperity through applied research and independent analysis, global engagement and policy innovation.
Dr Ponzio also co-directs the Stimson Center-ledGlobal Governance Innovation Network.
What’s the purpose of the Summit of the Future planned for September 2024?
The Summit of the Future, the convening of which had been recommended by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, was originally set to be held in 2023, but following somewhat acrimonious negotiations a decision was made to delay it by a year. We witnessed a major diplomatic fault-line between several influential global south countries and a large proportion of the UN membership, caused primarily by the perceived competition between the Summit of the Future and the mid-point Summit for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Summit), held in September 2023.
In particular, Cuba, on behalf of the G77 and China, repeatedly reiterated its lingering concerns that the Summit of the Future’s multiple tracks could divert political attention, financial resources and precious time, particularly for smaller UN missions, from the ‘main priority’ of achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
This is one significant area where civil society organisations worldwide can help bridge divisions between major groupings of UN member states. Specifically, they can help build the case that while the SDG Summit arrived at a relatively brief high-level political statement acknowledging global governance gaps in need of urgent attention to accelerate progress on the 2030 Agenda, the preparatory process for next year’s Summit of the Future is designed to realise – through well-conceived, politically acceptable and adequately resourced reform proposals – the actual systemic changes needed to fill those gaps.
This will entail comprehensively tracking the SDG Summit’s identified gaps and ensuring their coverage, backed by sufficient financing and high-level political support – including through concurrent deliberations in the G20, G7 and BRICS+ forums – in the multiple, in-depth instruments to be negotiated for the Summit of the Future, including its main outcome document, the Pact for the Future, and the associated Declaration on Future Generations, Global Digital Compact and New Agenda for Peace. In tangible ways, these instruments will help take forward the 2030 Agenda, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the wider UN agenda.
What key considerations should policymakers take into account ahead of the Summit?
While seeking to avoid political minefields that could make working relations between major groupings of UN member states even more toxic, it is critical that in the coming weeks and months, all member states begin to coalesce around a select number of ambitious, high-impact global governance innovations that will constitute the chief legacy of the Summit. Otherwise, what’s the point of holding it, let alone the UN75 Declaration and the Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda that preceded it?
The UN 60 Summit held in 2005 was the last time the need for improvements across the entire UN system was reviewed in a single intergovernmental summit. Although governments came up short in high-profile areas such as Security Council reform and disarmament, there were three major achievements: the creation of the new UN peacebuilding architecture, which included the Peacebuilding Commission, Fund and Support Office; the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect principle; and the upgrade of an enfeebled Human Rights Commission into an empowered Human Rights Council with new tools for safeguarding human rights, such as the widely acclaimed Universal Periodic Review.
What would a successful Summit of the Future look like?
Five big-ticket reforms, one for each of the Pact for the Future’s five agreed chapter headings, would help ensure a legacy worthy of UN75 that addresses today’s toughest global challenges.
In the area of sustainable development and financing for development, the convening of a biennial UN-G20+ Summit for the Global Economy would help foster socioeconomic recovery from the pandemic, mitigate and manage cross-border shocks and address rising global inequality. Such global economic convening would push the leaders of the G20 and heads of the international financial institutions and World Trade Organization to join all 193 UN member states and the Secretary-General for the General Assembly’s annual high-level week – in which the participation of influential countries at the highest level has waned.
In the area of international peace and security, a major reform would be the upgrade of the UN Peacebuilding Commission to an empowered Peacebuilding Council equipped to prevent conflict and build just and durable peace after protracted violent conflicts. Crucially, this would involve an expanded mandate to enhance peacebuilding policy development, coordination, resource mobilisation and conflict prevention efforts in countries and regions not directly addressed by the Security Council.
In the area of science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation, it would be key to establish an International Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agency to advance the core principles of safety, sustainability, and inclusion through effective global governance to harness the potential of artificial intelligence and other cyber-technologies for humanity. Specifically, the new agency would improve visibility, advocacy and resource mobilisation for global AI regulatory efforts and provide thought leadership and help to implement General Assembly and Security Council AI and cyber-technology initiatives.
Regarding young people and future generations, the focus should be on establishing an Earth Stewardship Council (ESC) for improved governance of the global commons, as well as a new Special Envoy for Future Generations, to better carry out together the Declaration on Future Generations now being negotiated. To ensure member states’ adherence to their declaration commitments, the ESC could conduct an annual Future Generations Review.
Finally, the transformation of global governance could be achieved through reform of the global economic and financial architecture to allow for greater stability and sustainable progress. Among the most urgent changes needed is the strengthening of the global debt architecture through, for example, debt-for-nature-swaps and a representative sovereign debt authority to aid indebted countries in restructuring. There’s also an urgent need to repurpose multilateral development banks by expanding their lending capacity by more than US$100 billion, reforming voting rights and decision-making rules, instituting new measures to de-risk investments to further unleash private capital and issuing the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights more regularly and at greater scale to finance critical global public goods.
What pitfalls should the international community watch out for in the run up to the Summit?
As noted earlier, a major diplomatic fault-line has opened between several influential global south countries and a large proportion of the UN’s membership, the Secretariat and many civil society groups.
Despite a well-conceived and carefully consulted ‘roadmap’ by the summit’s co-facilitators, the permanent representatives to the UN of Germany and Namibia, and 11 carefully crafted policy briefs by the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, the current approach to Summit preparation involving consultations with member states and other stakeholders has been disappointing.
Being excessively process-oriented, for most of last year it focused on determining the precise number of intergovernmental negotiating tracks and the degree of ambition within each track, risking delays to substantive work on the Pact for the Future and related instruments.
Long-overdue discussions on substance are urgently needed to improve the methods and institutions that will enable the UN to face an expansive and critical agenda that runs across its three pillars – peace and security, sustainable development and human rights. Their absence is keeping the international community from achieving the UN we need for the future we want, as the UN75 Report put it.
How can civil society engage with the Summit?
As in past UN summits, the active, well-informed and independent contributions of diverse partners from across civil society worldwide, including advocates from civil society organisations, community-based leaders, regional and country-level practitioners, scholars, policy analysts and faith community leaders, are critical to a successful outcome. As well as having innovative ideas and expertise to share, they can help amplify key messages and commitments coming out of government-led negotiations in the weeks and months ahead for the broader public in their countries, mobilising greater support for actions to address global challenges.
To facilitate further constructive contributions from civil society over the coming months, the Coalition for the UN We Need has encouraged UN missions to consider welcoming at least one individual civil society and one individual youth representative onto their negotiating teams in the months prior to the Summit, as well as to encourage open and accessible intergovernmental meetings for civil society to observe and, on occasion, offer timely substantive inputs. Member states are also encouraged to welcome and facilitate the participation of their national civil society leaders in the 9-10 May UN-Civil Society Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, which the UN Secretariat is planning with the Coalition for the UN We Need and other civil society partners committed to maximising the full potential of the Summit of the Future.
Through a combination of critical mass, quality ideas, enlightened global leadership and deft multilateral diplomacy, civil society can team up with champion governments, alongside dynamic leaders in global and regional institutions, to ensure that this literally once-in-a-generation Summit of the Future makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Together, governments and their partners in civil society and multilateral institutions must work quickly and resolutely to leverage this opportunity to realise the future we want and the UN we need for present and future generations.
How is the Stimson Center working to bring different stakeholders together?
Since the 2015 report of the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance, Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance, and the 2021 launch of the Global Governance Innovation Network (GGIN), the Stimson Center has encouraged constructive engagement of diverse stakeholders in civil society, government and the private sector on issues of global governance innovation, and specifically in preparation for the 2024 Summit of the Future.
Among the GGIN’s primary workstreams, it has facilitated 10 global and regional policy dialogues in the global north and south, including a forthcoming one in Africa, undertakes and commissions policy research, including from female and younger scholars, and coordinates a diverse, global online community of practice including scholars, practitioners and policy advocates.
The GGIN is also a proud founding partner of the Coalition for the UN We Need, which – along with its predecessor, the UN2020 campaign – provides a global platform to enable greater civil society impact in strengthening the UN system. In 2024, the Coalition will give particular attention to engaging civil society partners in its critical advocacy work to raise the ambition of the Summit of the Future so that it can make the UN system more inclusive, effective and accountable.
Get in touch with the Stimson Center through itswebsite and follow@StimsonCenter,@GGINetwork and@ponzio_richard on Twitter.
This interview was conducted as part of the ENSURED Horizon research project funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. -
RI’s Reemergence through Summit Diplomacy
Early in February, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will join UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Monrovia, Liberia, in leading the third UN High-Level Panel Meeting for the Post 2015 Development Agenda discussions.
The discussions will continue in Bali in March, before a report is produced for the UN Secretary General in May, to serve as a basis for a new development agenda. Following the meeting in Africa, the President is expected to join the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit in Cairo to address the needs of the Ummah.
Later in 2013, he will join G20 leaders in St Petersburg to discuss economic inclusiveness and development at the premier forum for international economic cooperation.
Read more at The Jakarta Post
