UN75 2020 & Beyond: Global Governance Forum 2020

The UN75 Global Governance Forum seeks to promote a more inclusive and effective United Nations through dialogue and recommendations that better harness the ideas, capabilities, and networks of both state and non-state actors for achieving the UN’s commitment to peace, sustainable development, human rights, and a stable climate.

As we approach the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations under the banner “the future we want, the UN we need”, we reflect on the complex challenges facing our world, including cross-border health pandemics, economic shocks, inequality, climate instability, and threats to peace and security, and bring forward a call to action. Talking about what the UN system can do for us and the changes required is important. An even more critical challenge is to engage stakeholders from within and outside the world body to co-create partnerships and pathways to the future we fervently desire and a United Nations that inspires and serves all humanity.

Forum Goals:

• Initiate a new generation of scale-able, multi-stakeholder partnership iniatives that better harness, for 2020 and beyond, the ideas, capabilities and networks of state & non-state actors for achieving the UN’s commitment to peace, sustainable development, human rights, and a stable climate
• Build consensus around a strategy for a select number of “global governance institutional, policy, and normative innovations.

Agenda

PARTNERSHIP TRACK DISCUSSIONS (INVITATION ONLY)

INNOVATION TRACK E-CONSULTATION AND WEBINAR SERIES (INVITATION ONLY)

PLENARY SESSIONS HELD ON SEPTEMBER 16 & 17 FROM 9:00 AM TO 1:00 PM
(REGISTRATION OPENS ON AUGUST 5)

Background

Since its founding in 1945, governments have strived through the United Nations to create a system that addresses global challenges around the three main pillars: Peace & Security, Development, and Human Rights. Climate governance has now, in effect, become the world body’s fourth pillar. Though the emergence of global civil society and the business community have added new capabilities to our global governance system, the complexity of the modern world—including, for starters, the harmful spread of the COVID-19 virus and its devastating financial and economic consequences, the disruptive effects of new technologies, the threat of runaway climate change, rising violence in fragile states and regions, and record migration and refugee levels—is outpacing our collective ability to manage globalization for the benefit of all nations and peoples.

Today, learning from both failures and hard-fought successes, we know much more about what an effective holistic process for progressive global change looks like—harnessing the thinking, resources, and connections among state and non-state actors across the UN system’s four pillars (i.e., building effective partnerships)—and the specific global norms, policies, and institutional reforms needed (i.e., promoting innovation), to achieve a new end state that better serves the shared aspirations of all humanity.

The UN75 Global Governance Forum is premised on the idea that diverse stakeholders, working collaboratively and empowered by new technologies, represent the best way forward toward achieving both the future people worldwide are calling for and the new United Nations we so urgently need.

The UN75 Global Governance Forum is organized around Four Thematic Pillars:

Two Tracks (Invite Only)

Track 1: Partnerships Across the forum’s four pillars (peace and security, sustainable development, human rights and humanitarian action, and climate governance), plenary presentations and breakout groups will explore new kinds of multi-stakeholder partnerships composed of UN system departments/agencies, states, the private sector, philanthropists, and broader civil society groups from all regions. While the forum’s Day 1 will focus on the formulation of pre-vetted partnerships to achieve specific outcomes, Day 2 will seek to nurture the development of 15-20 new multi-stakeholder partnerships to advance the mission of the United Nations across its main pillars of action. The partnerships will be drawn from various stages of development. Each partnership will represent an opportunity to be scaled and replicated in the future. Each of the partnerships showcased will be presented to the UN75 Leaders Summit, planned for 21 September, in New York.

Track 2: Innovation Building on preceding online and in-person global and regional policy dialogues and an e-consultation, this track will build consensus on and devise a reform strategy for a select number (i.e., no more than 10 to 15) of “Global Governance Institutional, Policy, and Normative Innovations for UN75 & Beyond” that both complement and improve the conditions for effective multi-stakeholder partnerships promoted in Track 1. The proposed innovations will also aim to further develop and go beyond official UN75 Declaration commitments.

Example Partnerships

Global Challenges Foundation – Climate Risk Governance Commission
Lead: The Global Climate/Nature Emergency and the Governance Gap
The Commission aims to fill a crucial gap in confronting the global climate emergency, by innovating and proposing feasible high impact global governance solutions for urgent, exponential climate action, to limit global temperature rise to or below 1.5°C.

Alliance for Multilateralism
Lead: Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace
The goal of the Paris Call is to constitute a community of supporters from all sectors – public sector, private sector, civil society – that unite around, promote and implement a common set of values and principles in order to increase trust and security in the cyberspace. 

Secure Fisheries:  One Earth Future
Lead: Cold Catch – Developing a Cold Chain Infrastructure for the Somali Fishing Industry
This partnership will bring about an innovative multi-disciplinary solution in partnership with the Global Cold Chain Alliance, to cold chain infrastructure that can be piloted in Somalia and expanded to other LDCs.

Expected Outcomes

• Showcase innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships among civil society, the private sector, philanthropists, governments and the UN system to complement the intergovernmental UN 75 Declaration. These parallel commitments will be presented at the September 21, 2020 UN 75 Leaders Summit.
• Catalyze a follow-on intergovernmental process(es) post-2020 (i) to facilitate progress on new multi-stakeholder collaborations, and (ii) to support the UN 75 Declaration and Leaders Summit through proposed institutional, policy, and normative innovations in the global governance system.

Opportunities to Participate

• Be part of a global network from governments, UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, the business community, and philanthropic sector.
• Pursue creative new multi-stakeholder partnerships with UN system and government leaders.
• Contribute to the Forum’s agenda, including speaking and general participation opportunities, by participating in the private sector-philanthropic institutions advisory group, UN Advisory Group, or Coordination Group.
• Become a sponsor of this historic event.

Contact

Forum Director: Maureen Connolly, [email protected]

Partnerships Track: Ramon Alvero, [email protected]

Innovation Track: Cristina Petcu, [email protected] and Banou Arjomand, [email protected]

HONORARY CO-CHAIRS

UN75 Global Governance Forum Partnerships

The Stimson Center, One Earth Future Foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office, Global Challenges Foundation, and Global Governance Philanthropy Network are convening, on September 16 and 17 2020, a UN75 Global Governance Forum.

Held immediately prior to the September 21, 2020 gathering of world leaders to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the forum will bring together 300+ leaders worldwide from governments, global civil society, and the technology, business, and philanthropic communities to foster new kinds of innovative partnerships with the United Nations system to better address global peace and security, sustainable development, human rights, and humanitarian action, and climate governance challenges. Below is a selection of the partnerships to be showcased at the Forum:

Peace and Security

Sustainable Development

Human Rights and Humanitarian Action

Climate Governance

PLANNING GROUP