United Nations & Multilateralism - Archive

Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed as a keynote speaker the 67th World Health Assembly on May 20, 2014. Civil Society Organizations like the Peoples' Health Movement and Third World Network express their strong protest against the decision of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to invite her. According to undersigned organizations, inter alia Ms. Gates’ credentials as a leader in public health are unclear. In addition, more worth knowing is that the private organization, which [...]

A new book about UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who influenced fundamental principles and practices of the United Nations, will be launched by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation at Uppsala University House on May 19, 2014. More than fifty years after the death of Hammarskjöld in a plane crash, GPF policy advisor Henning Melber and Carsten Stahn publish a tribute to him. In the book, they critically review his values and experiences in office as well as concepts associated with him, such [...]

Global Policy Forum and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office publish a joint report on the concept of a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). "In whose name? A critical view on the Responsibility to Protect” by Lou Pingeot and Wolfgang Obenland provides an overview of the history and content of R2P, its positive contributions and its flaws. It concludes that R2P does not give a satisfying answer to the key question it is supposed to address: how best to prevent and, if [...]

A new brochure by ETO Consortium reacts to the considerable urgency to strengthen Extraterritorial Obligations by States (ETOs) and implement the primacy of human rights in the middle of diverse and global crises. On the basis of its mandate, the ETO Consortium deals with economic, social and cultural rights and uses the Maastricht Principles on States’ extraterritorial obligations as its key term of reference. Just as the Maastricht Principles carry the spirit of indivisibility of human rights, so do the [...]

In a new working paper, Marianne Beisheim from the German Insitute for International and Security Affairs analyzes the options for a review mechanism for the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), a UN body created after the Rio+20 summit in 2012 and inaugurated in September 2013. The HLPF is replacing the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development and aimed at providing political leadership and guidance and a a dynamic platform for regular dialogue, stocktaking, and agenda-setting – all to [...]

Today Global Policy Forum and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office publish a new report on recent developments and practices of the security outsourcing of the UN. GPF's Lou Pingeot discusses the increasing use of private military and security companies (PMSCs), the shifting understanding of their role and activities, and how this influences the perception of the UN by other actors. The report discusses the UN’s attempt to increase transparency and accountability in their selection processes of PMSCs. Finally, Pingeot [...]

A new Briefing Paper by Oxfam deals with the diagnosis that economic inequality was rapidly raising in the majority of countries: "almost half going to the richest one percent; the other half to the remaining 99 percent". As this inequality was interdependent with economic capture, Oxfam's paper calls on the World Economic Forum to do something about that: "Left unchecked, political institutions become undermined and governments overwhelmingly serve the interests of economic elites to the detriment of ordinary people. Extreme [...]

On December 18, 2013 the 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved a UN privacy resolution entitled "The right to privacy in the digital age." The resolution, which was introduced by Brazil and Germany and sponsored by more than 50 member states, is aimed at upholding the right to privacy for everyone at a time when the United States and the United Kingdom have been conducting sweeping mass surveillance on billions of innocent individuals around the world [...]

American economist Joseph E. Stiglitz addressed the second UN Forum on Business and Human Rights on 3 December 2013. In his powerful speech he called on Governments to move beyond soft law towards a binding international agreement on business and human rights. He concluded: "Economic theory has explained why we cannot rely on the pursuit of self-interest; and the experiences of recent years have reinforced that conclusion. What is needed is stronger norms, clearer understandings of what is acceptable—and what [...]

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has published a report authored by GPF’s Barbara Adams and Lou Pingeot. The report titled “Whose Development, Whose UN?” gives an analysis of the future 'we don’t want' and the challenges facing the UN in the run up to the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. It takes a look at the state of the UN’s historically values-based framework and the interests of the different development actors shaping the post-2015 development paradigm, particularly focusing on the [...]

A joint statement was drafted by participants of the first annual People's Forum on Human Rights and Businesses calling for an international legally binding instrument on human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The Forum demands the establishement of monitoring mechanisms that include the supervision of extraterritorial obilgations of transnational corporations.

In her book review of Birgit Müller's (ed.) "The Gloss of Harmony: The Politics of Policy Making in Multilateral Organisations", Ingeborg Gaarde writes: "This book takes us to the negotiation rooms and backstages at UN Headquarters as well as to the local sites where global policies show their direct impact [...] The authors show how international organizations are working in disciplined arenas with layers of embedded power dynamics, and in the confrontation between representations. However, the chapters of the book [...]

Harris Gleckman has published an article titled ‘ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture’. The article written for iisd surrounds the extensive reforms made to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). After the latest reform resolution, four distinct new elements to ECOSOC have appeared following the governments agreement on new operating rules for the council.

A group of United Nations human rights experts urges governments worldwide to take into account a set of guidelines on extraterritorial obligations adopted by leading specialists in international law and human rights on 28 September 2011 in Maastricht, the Netherlands: the Maastricht Principles.

United Nations' Unions call for action ahead of the 2013 General Assembly about the credibility of mercenaries being used to carry out security and peacekeeping work. Their call is based on a report published by the United Nations’ Working Group on the use of mercenaries, which reveals that the UN is increasingly outsourcing contracts for armed guards, convoy security, security advice, risk assessment and transport services. This report is supported by Global Policy Forum’s report on the use of Private [...]

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has issued a publication about the newly formed ACT initiative created by 22 UN countries to accelerate and promote developments in accountability, coherence and transparency within the UN Security Council. ACT also aims to encourage non-council members to take part and reform the prior working methods of the council to allow non-members to benefit more from the body.

A new policy paper published by the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development argues that the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa will not be able to combat hunger and food insecurity in Africa. On the contrary, the paper, to which Global Policy Forum contributed, points out that the New Alliance is mainly focused on providing multinationals with opportunities to reap profits through the creation of environments conducive to investment. Thus, the paper calls for [...]

Martin Khor, director of South Centre, explains how the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement could potentially disadvantage participating developing countries. He points out that local producers will have to compete with large foreign businesses. Moreover, the TPPA will give foreign companies more opportunities to sue governments, while also raising the prices of medicines.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Second World Conference on Human Rights, which produced the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, a wide range of civil society organizations gathered in Vienna this week. They adopted the Vienna+20 CSO Declaration, which emphasizes the primacy of human rights and calls for rights to be made operational.

The world faces an unprecedented coincidence of global crises. They testify to the failure of the dominant model of development and economic progress that is oriented on a technocratic modernisation path, is blind to human rights and the ecological limits of the global ecosystem, confuses growth of Gross Domestic Product with progress in society, and regards poverty as a primarily technical challenge in which categories of inequality and social justice are neglected.

The Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development [...]

On 31 October 2011 the Reflection Group submitted a statement to the secretariat of the Rio+20 Conference to be held in June 2012. It was prepared during a drafting session in October in New Paltz, NY and highlights some of the issues and proposals that will come up in the final report of the Reflection Group again. The final report will come out in spring of 2012 after a final meeting of the Group.

The financial and economic crisis of 2008/2009 only reached the developing world with a time lag. At least in parts of the Global South the crisis is having a huge social and economic impact. As a result, the prospects of achieving the internationallyagreed developing goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by2015 are receding ever more into distance.But the crisis has also brought about a change in the economic policy discourse. The blind faith of neo-liberal economists and the overnments [...]

Having seen dynamic developments in the 1990s, relations between the United Nations (UN) and civil society are now at a critical stage. The number of private actors participating in international negotiations has been increasing and led to a more extensive involvement of these actors in global policy processes. But all attempts to extend formal participatory rights for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the UN have failed so far.

Some governments have responded rather defensively to the increasing (quantitative) presence of non-state [...]

This paper discusses the main causes of the steep run-up in global food prices and the resulting spread of hunger to nearly a billion people worldwide. Authors James A. Paul and Katarina Wahlberg conclude that biofuels and the agro-industrial approach to food production are the main culprits of the food crisis. The paper looks at a wide range of factors endangering nutrition for all, including population growth, unsustainable consumption, international trade policy and climate change. The authors argue for effective [...]

Global Policy Forum's Katarina Wahlberg criticizes the World Bank's proposal to create a Green Revolution in Africa. By focusing on boosting agricultural production through scientific development of more productive crops, the Bank disregards the fact that the Earth's biological systems cannot be exploited forever. The supporters of the new Green Revolution also fail to address the major causes of the global food crisis, including biofuel production and unsustainable global consumption of meat. The author calls for a shift from industrial [...]