From continued volatility and inequality in the global financial and economic system and fears of renewed health risks to the present triple planetary crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution) and need to overcome growing divisions between the BRICS+ and G7 countries, divergent views animate current debates on reform of the United Nations, international financial institutions, World Trade Organization, and G20 toward forging a more coherent and effective way for managing global financial, economic, social, and environmental governance. At the same time, Great Power tensions, especially over Ukraine, Taiwan, and reform of the Security Council, as well as Global North-South mistrust (think Gaza, as well as the failure to meet climate finance and wider development-aid targets) have risked, since the start of intergovernmental negotiations in 2023, paralyzing preparations toward this month’s (September 22-23, 2024) Summit of the Future.
Against this politically fraught backdrop, the Summit of the Future—and equally important, its sustained, multi-year follow-through—provides unique opportunities for modernizing global multilateral institutions to meet current and over-the-horizon challenges and opportunities. Simultaneously, the implementation of the summit’s chief outcome document, the Pact for the Future, and two associated instruments (a Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations), can help to begin to build greater trust and improve conditions for global cooperation between the G7 and BRICS+ countries and, more broadly speaking, between advanced industrialized countries in the Global North and both emerging economies and least developed countries in the Global South.
Nowhere in the near-finalized Summit of the Future agenda are the opportunities greater for reinvigorating and creating new multilateral institutions than in Chapter 5 of the Pact for the Future on “Transforming global governance.” Encompassing twenty distinct actions (#’s 41-60) and many more associated commitments, five stand-out initiatives that wield promise as high-impact global governance innovations and are likely to constitute a chief part of the legacy of this month’s summit are:
Reform of the Security Council
The present (Revision 3) draft of the Pact for the Future calls for (in Action 42) reforming the UN Security Council, including by: “recognizing the urgent need to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable.”With the new momentum generated by the Summit of the Future, the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform should work, over the next two-years, toward a long overdue agreement on a more representative Security Council in line with changing geo-political realities. Consistent with recommendations of the 2015 Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance (co-led by the Stimson Center and The Hague Institute for Global Justice), reform of the Council should aim to create more opportunities for countries, regional organizations, local authorities, and non-state actors to contribute to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, while increasing the Council’s representative legitimacy and restraint in the use of the veto.
Develop the New Biennial Summit on the Global Economy
Albeit with limited guidance, the Pact for the Future further welcomes (in Action 51): “the initiative to convene a Biennial Summit at the level of Heads of State and Government to strengthen existing and establish more systematic links and coordination between the United Nations and the international financial institutions, and we stress the importance of inclusive participation.” As elaborated in the new Global Governance Innovation Network Policy Brief on a Biennial UN-G20+ Summit: Bridging the Global Economy Governance Gap, UN Member States now must flesh out and fully maximize this new, potentially dynamic global platform toward, for instance, the intertwined goals of better fostering socioeconomic recovery from the pandemic, mitigating and managing cross-border shocks, and addressing rising global inequality. Moreover, establishing a small “networked secretariat” led by the UN Deputy Secretary-General and engaging senior technical staff from the IFIs, WTO, and rotating G20 presidency could ensure the accountability of Biennial Summit decisions.
Support the UN in Rolling-Out Emergency Platforms
Thirdly, the Pact for the Future also recommends (in Action 57): “Present for the consideration of Member States protocols for convening and operationalizing emergency platforms based on flexible approaches to respond to a range of different complex global shocks, including criteria for triggering and phasing out emergency platforms, ensuring that emergency platforms are convened for a finite period and will not be a standing institution or entity.” In response to shocks to the global system caused by, for example, a sudden financial downturn, food and energy insecurity, environmental disasters, and future pandemics, emergency platforms manifest the potential to better harness capabilities and cement commitments across the international system (harnessing the resources of myriad, diverse state-based and non-state actors) to achieve greater proficiency and positive, life-saving results—rather than a “power grab”, emergency platforms are much more a “force multiplier.”
Strengthen and Innovate the Annual Climate COPS
While the Pact for the Future speaks to “strengthening international cooperation for the environment” in Action 58, it does not offer ideas on rethinking and enhancing the global apex intergovernmental negotiating forum for climate action: the annual Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. As recommended by the Robinson-Espinosa-Rockström Climate Governance Commission (supported by the Stimson Center), UN Member States should work to streamline and rationalize the annual Climate COPs as a more catalytic and results-oriented global decision-making and policy action forum, with more effective inclusion of diverse stakeholders through the formation of dynamic yet focused multistakeholder coalitions. Additionally, professional mediation and facilitation tools should be employed, and new Paris Agreement accountability mechanisms introduced.
Upgrade the UN Peacebuilding Commission Into An Empowered Peacebuilding Council
Fifth and finally, under Action 47 (“We will strengthen the Peacebuilding Commission”), the Pact for the Future does not offer any imaginative or consequential ideas. With an eye to the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review and learning from the 2005/6 (UN60) upgrade of the UN Human Rights Commission into a more authoritative and effective Human Rights Council, the Global Governance Innovation Report 2023: Redefining Approaches to Peace, Security & Humanitarian Action recommends upgrading the Peacebuilding Commission into an empowered Peacebuilding Council for both preventing and building just and durable peace after a protracted violent conflict. Crucially, this would involve an expanded mandate to lead on peacebuilding policy development, coordination, resource mobilization, and conflict prevention efforts in countries and regions not directly addressed by the UN Security Council. The upgraded body should be further entrusted with a new Peacebuilding Audit tool, modeled on the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), for tracking early-warning indicators to better facilitate early action by the Peacebuilding Council toward preventing the outbreak or recurrence of violent conflict. As with the UPR, all countries would participate periodically in such audits, supported in some cases by the rigorous work of UN special rapporteurs.
While all sixty of the Pact for the Future’s actions and associated commitments hold out hope—if their ambition is fully realized through a concerted, multi-year implementation and monitoring effort that allows for rapid course corrections, where necessary—the twenty presented in its Chapter Five on “Transforming global governance” demonstrate the highest potential for achieving a more networked, inclusive, and effective multilateral system. Fortunately, several are also the focus of the twenty new multistakeholder ImPact Coalitions (comprised of like-minded civil society organizations, private sector partners, and champion governments) initiated at the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Support of the Summit of the Future. Civil society, the business community, and committed governments are essential to leveraging the Pact for the Future’s generational opportunity to renew and innovate our system of global governance for the benefit of all nations and peoples.
Chapter 5: “Transforming Global Governance”
By Richard Ponzio
International & Regional Organizations
From continued volatility and inequality in the global financial and economic system and fears of renewed health risks to the present triple planetary crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution) and need to overcome growing divisions between the BRICS+ and G7 countries, divergent views animate current debates on reform of the United Nations, international financial institutions, World Trade Organization, and G20 toward forging a more coherent and effective way for managing global financial, economic, social, and environmental governance. At the same time, Great Power tensions, especially over Ukraine, Taiwan, and reform of the Security Council, as well as Global North-South mistrust (think Gaza, as well as the failure to meet climate finance and wider development-aid targets) have risked, since the start of intergovernmental negotiations in 2023, paralyzing preparations toward this month’s (September 22-23, 2024) Summit of the Future.
Against this politically fraught backdrop, the Summit of the Future—and equally important, its sustained, multi-year follow-through—provides unique opportunities for modernizing global multilateral institutions to meet current and over-the-horizon challenges and opportunities. Simultaneously, the implementation of the summit’s chief outcome document, the Pact for the Future, and two associated instruments (a Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations), can help to begin to build greater trust and improve conditions for global cooperation between the G7 and BRICS+ countries and, more broadly speaking, between advanced industrialized countries in the Global North and both emerging economies and least developed countries in the Global South.
Nowhere in the near-finalized Summit of the Future agenda are the opportunities greater for reinvigorating and creating new multilateral institutions than in Chapter 5 of the Pact for the Future on “Transforming global governance.” Encompassing twenty distinct actions (#’s 41-60) and many more associated commitments, five stand-out initiatives that wield promise as high-impact global governance innovations and are likely to constitute a chief part of the legacy of this month’s summit are:
Reform of the Security Council
The present (Revision 3) draft of the Pact for the Future calls for (in Action 42) reforming the UN Security Council, including by: “recognizing the urgent need to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable.”With the new momentum generated by the Summit of the Future, the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform should work, over the next two-years, toward a long overdue agreement on a more representative Security Council in line with changing geo-political realities. Consistent with recommendations of the 2015 Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance (co-led by the Stimson Center and The Hague Institute for Global Justice), reform of the Council should aim to create more opportunities for countries, regional organizations, local authorities, and non-state actors to contribute to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, while increasing the Council’s representative legitimacy and restraint in the use of the veto.
Develop the New Biennial Summit on the Global Economy
Albeit with limited guidance, the Pact for the Future further welcomes (in Action 51): “the initiative to convene a Biennial Summit at the level of Heads of State and Government to strengthen existing and establish more systematic links and coordination between the United Nations and the international financial institutions, and we stress the importance of inclusive participation.” As elaborated in the new Global Governance Innovation Network Policy Brief on a Biennial UN-G20+ Summit: Bridging the Global Economy Governance Gap, UN Member States now must flesh out and fully maximize this new, potentially dynamic global platform toward, for instance, the intertwined goals of better fostering socioeconomic recovery from the pandemic, mitigating and managing cross-border shocks, and addressing rising global inequality. Moreover, establishing a small “networked secretariat” led by the UN Deputy Secretary-General and engaging senior technical staff from the IFIs, WTO, and rotating G20 presidency could ensure the accountability of Biennial Summit decisions.
Support the UN in Rolling-Out Emergency Platforms
Thirdly, the Pact for the Future also recommends (in Action 57): “Present for the consideration of Member States protocols for convening and operationalizing emergency platforms based on flexible approaches to respond to a range of different complex global shocks, including criteria for triggering and phasing out emergency platforms, ensuring that emergency platforms are convened for a finite period and will not be a standing institution or entity.” In response to shocks to the global system caused by, for example, a sudden financial downturn, food and energy insecurity, environmental disasters, and future pandemics, emergency platforms manifest the potential to better harness capabilities and cement commitments across the international system (harnessing the resources of myriad, diverse state-based and non-state actors) to achieve greater proficiency and positive, life-saving results—rather than a “power grab”, emergency platforms are much more a “force multiplier.”
Strengthen and Innovate the Annual Climate COPS
While the Pact for the Future speaks to “strengthening international cooperation for the environment” in Action 58, it does not offer ideas on rethinking and enhancing the global apex intergovernmental negotiating forum for climate action: the annual Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. As recommended by the Robinson-Espinosa-Rockström Climate Governance Commission (supported by the Stimson Center), UN Member States should work to streamline and rationalize the annual Climate COPs as a more catalytic and results-oriented global decision-making and policy action forum, with more effective inclusion of diverse stakeholders through the formation of dynamic yet focused multistakeholder coalitions. Additionally, professional mediation and facilitation tools should be employed, and new Paris Agreement accountability mechanisms introduced.
Upgrade the UN Peacebuilding Commission Into An Empowered Peacebuilding Council
Fifth and finally, under Action 47 (“We will strengthen the Peacebuilding Commission”), the Pact for the Future does not offer any imaginative or consequential ideas. With an eye to the 2025 Peacebuilding Architecture Review and learning from the 2005/6 (UN60) upgrade of the UN Human Rights Commission into a more authoritative and effective Human Rights Council, the Global Governance Innovation Report 2023: Redefining Approaches to Peace, Security & Humanitarian Action recommends upgrading the Peacebuilding Commission into an empowered Peacebuilding Council for both preventing and building just and durable peace after a protracted violent conflict. Crucially, this would involve an expanded mandate to lead on peacebuilding policy development, coordination, resource mobilization, and conflict prevention efforts in countries and regions not directly addressed by the UN Security Council. The upgraded body should be further entrusted with a new Peacebuilding Audit tool, modeled on the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), for tracking early-warning indicators to better facilitate early action by the Peacebuilding Council toward preventing the outbreak or recurrence of violent conflict. As with the UPR, all countries would participate periodically in such audits, supported in some cases by the rigorous work of UN special rapporteurs.
While all sixty of the Pact for the Future’s actions and associated commitments hold out hope—if their ambition is fully realized through a concerted, multi-year implementation and monitoring effort that allows for rapid course corrections, where necessary—the twenty presented in its Chapter Five on “Transforming global governance” demonstrate the highest potential for achieving a more networked, inclusive, and effective multilateral system. Fortunately, several are also the focus of the twenty new multistakeholder ImPact Coalitions (comprised of like-minded civil society organizations, private sector partners, and champion governments) initiated at the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Support of the Summit of the Future. Civil society, the business community, and committed governments are essential to leveraging the Pact for the Future’s generational opportunity to renew and innovate our system of global governance for the benefit of all nations and peoples.
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