In introducing novel ideas for the September 2024 Summit of the Future and New Agenda for Peace, this report seeks to encourage more ambitious, forward looking thinking and deliberation on global... Show moreIn introducing novel ideas for the September 2024 Summit of the Future and New Agenda for Peace, this report seeks to encourage more ambitious, forward looking thinking and deliberation on global governance renewal and innovation. The world needs better ways to manage its many, growing problems. Engaging new voices, instruments, networks, knowledge, and structures is the key to coping with today’s and future global challenges, which include, but are not limited to, renewed Great Power tensions, deepening Global North-South divides, virulent nationalism, runway climate change, and unconstrained artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop, the inaugural Global Governance Innovation Report (GGIR) aims to inform and advance debates on improving global governance, and to spur action to that end, drawing on insights from two new tools: a Global Governance Index and a Global Governance Survey. Encouraging greater ambition in preparations for the September 2024 Summit of the Future in New York and a New Agenda for Peace, the report offers proactive measures to better prevent, and failing that, limit the escalation of deadly conflict; reconsiders disarmament measures to boost conditions for conflict management and resolution; and proposes a next generation humanitarian action architecture to save more lives when conflict prevention and mitigation fail. Central to a strategy for change, GGIR’23 introduces five steps for mobilizing a broad-based, smart coalition of governments and civil society groups to maximize the generational opportunity afforded by next year’s Summit, to better ensure “the future we want and the United Nations we need” for present and future generations. Show less
With the proliferation of advanced military and information technologies, growing ease of movement, increasing climate instability, and the rise of violent extremism, conflict and state fragility... Show moreWith the proliferation of advanced military and information technologies, growing ease of movement, increasing climate instability, and the rise of violent extremism, conflict and state fragility have increased since reaching a twenty-year low in 2010. In 2017, the latest year with complete data, nearly ninety-two thousand individuals lost their lives in various forms of violent conflict.Countries also face many cross-border economic threats and challenges—including weaknesses in cyberspace infrastructure, loss of tax revenues to illicit financial flows, illegal exploitation of natural resources, and other corrupt practices—that inhibit the growth of economies and the ability of governments to enhance economic resilience, especially in the Global South. Even more alarming, if humankind cannot find its way to limit average global warming to less than 1.5°C (looming as soon as 2030), further severe climatic changes are anticipated, including intensified biodiversity loss, storm surges, drought, desertification, and sea level rise of up to one meter by 2100.In the face of these global challenges, “we the peoples” are currently a house divided. In addition to “the West versus the rest” or “Global North versus Global South,” there are numerous divisions and discrepancies within and across societies along racial, gender, socioeconomic, and other lines. And as the discourse of recent years has shown, perceived injustices are at least as divisive as measurable discrepancies. The feeling of not benefitting (enough) from globalization is coupled with a desire to redefine national identities as incompatible with global citizenship and attempts to close states off from the outside world by putting up walls and fences, denouncing international agreements, and leaving common institutions.The roots of current discontents with global governance lie in the actual and perceived lack of justice and human security for many individuals in a globalized world. The current crisis of global governance undermines international support mechanisms intended to build resilience, reduce corruption, combat extremism, and ensure regional stability in global trouble spots.Therefore, global action by governments, international organizations, and global civil society— underpinned by a new global ethic—to reverse these dangerous trends has become the moral and practical imperative of the present era. Since the launch, in 2015, of the Report of the Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance, a concerted effort has been made to promote urgently needed global governance innovations, looking toward and continuing through the United Nations’ seventy-fifth anniversary in 2020.After much hard work by many parties, in June 2019 the UN General Assembly (A/RES/73/299) set into motion multilateral and multi-stakeholder negotiations on a “concise, substantive, forward-looking and unifying declaration that captures Member States’ collective commitment to multilateralism and to the United Nations and their shared vision for a common future” for consideration at a Heads of State Summit that is to gather in New York in September 2020, just one month before the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN’s founding (“UN 75”). Detailed in this study, we offer an updated Twenty Global Ideas for 2020, based on the Albright- Gambari Commission’s original analysis, broader reform recommendations, and worldwide consultations. Show less
Pursuing security and justice jointly in global governance will be vital to human progress in the twenty-first century. Humanity lives and operates simultaneously in three spaces critical... Show morePursuing security and justice jointly in global governance will be vital to human progress in the twenty-first century. Humanity lives and operates simultaneously in three spaces critical to contemporary life and governance: public, transactional and ecological. Failures in one space can cascade into others. Managing them so as to avoid such failures is an essential function of global governance. Public space is the home of governance (formal and informal) and of rights-exercising groups and individuals enjoying areas maintained for common use. Civil society fully exercising its basic human rights is essential to a well-functioning state, and well-functioning states are critical supporting elements in the present architecture of global governance. Wherever states are fragile or torn by conflict, they become fracture points in that architecture. Transactional space – the realm of trade, finance, and other markets and networks, especially digital – has experienced explosive growth in the last two decades. The new global economy is marked by openness and low costs of communication and transport but also greater vulnerability to, and opportunity for, transnational crime. Both of these spaces depend, in turn, on ecological space, the planet-wide system of systems that influence one another and set the background conditions for human life and civilisation. In none of these spaces are current tools and institutions of global governance up to the challenges they face. Mass violence in fragile states, cross-border economic shocks and cyber attacks, and the threat of runaway climate change threaten the public, transactional and ecological spaces of human existence. Getting global-governance reform right, however, will require paying close attention to the provision not just of security, but also of justice – and seeing to it that the two are mutually reinforcing. Show less
Pursuing security and justice jointly in global governance will be vital to human progress in the twenty-first century. Humanity lives and operates simultaneously in three spaces critical to... Show morePursuing security and justice jointly in global governance will be vital to human progress in the twenty-first century. Humanity lives and operates simultaneously in three spaces critical to contemporary life and governance: public, transactional and ecological. Failures in one space can cascade into others. Managing them so as to avoid such failures is an essential function of global governance. Public space is the home of governance (formal and informal) and of rights-exercising groups and individuals enjoying areas maintained for common use. Civil society fully exercising its basic human rights is essential to a well-functioning state, and well-functioning states are critical supporting elements in the present architecture of global governance. Wherever states are fragile or torn by conflict, they become fracture points in that architecture. Transactional space – the realm of trade, finance, and other markets and networks, especially digital – has experienced explosive growth in the last two decades. The new global economy is marked by openness and low costs of communication and transport but also greater vulnerability to, and opportunity for, transnational crime. Both of these spaces depend, in turn, on ecological space, the planet-wide system of systems that influence one another and set the background conditions for human life and civilisation. In none of these spaces are current tools and institutions of global governance up to the challenges they face. Mass violence in fragile states, cross-border economic shocks and cyber attacks, and the threat of runaway climate change threaten the public, transactional and ecological spaces of human existence. Getting global-governance reform right, however, will require paying close attention to the provision not just of security, but also of justice – and seeing to it that the two are mutually reinforcing. Show less
