United Nations & Multilateralism - Archive

By Barbara Adams

In order to intensify the effort to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN is exploring financial solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals. This includes examining the transformations needed in the financial sector that will encourage implementation and addressing a number of questions such as: What are the most effective means to better align the trillions of dollars of annual private investment with the sustainable development goals and their targets? Can this approach be prioritized [...]

"Free trade has both been negatively affected by and an active contributor to an anti-globalisation backlash in the public opinion of many advanced economies. Further trade liberalisation is increasingly resisted. Much of the backlash can be viewed as a reaction to the underlying policies that, in the past, have produced many »losers« – not just »winners« – and especially have increased income inequality. Most of the »low-hanging fruit« in trade liberalisation has already been harvested. In the search for further [...]

The international debate surrounding the environmental, social and human rights responsibilities of corporations has been gaining momentum. Growing public criticism of transnational corporations and banks has furthered this debate. A historic decision of the UN Human Rights Council (of 26 June 2014) to establish an intergovernmental working group “to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises” is one of its results. For the first time [...]

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) published a new report entitled “N2Africa, the Gates Foundation and legume commercialisation in Africa”. The report considers the N2Africa programme, which aims to develop and distribute improved, certified legume varieties (soya, common bean, groundnut and cow pea); promote and distribute inoculants and synthetic fertiliser; and develop commercial legume markets for smallholder integration in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana (core countries); Kenya, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Mozambique [...]

By Sarah Dayringer

The United Nations, like many institutions, is buffeted by the challenges of globalization, inequalities and an unsustainable growth pathway for the planet. It has not been shaped to deliver the demands of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its universal action plan, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States have the opportunity to close the institutional gaps in the UN development system, in the upcoming Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review (QCPR) negotiations beginning in October 2016 [...]

Transformational changes are needed to make the UN into a body that advances the public interest through democratic governance and commitment to its founding values. These changes will not be easy to bring about, but Adams and Judd give us the guideposts we need to set off on this path in the field of development. For one thing is clear: A piecemeal approach won’t get us the UN we need. A reform agenda that’s worth pursuing will recognize the entrenched [...]

By Sarah Dayringer

The United Nations – a 70-year-old institution – has reached an inflection point and like other institutions, is facing challenges in rapidly demanding times, challenges to which it must adapt in order to survive. Some Member States are asking if this important institution will maintain its relevance and credibility. They’re asking whether the UN development system will be able to be country-led and to deliver to all countries, and in particular demonstrate its commitment to implementing the [...]

By Barbara Adams and Sarah Dayringer

The UN has released the advance unedited version of its report of the UN Development System (UNDS), lightly entitled the “Implementation of General Assembly Resolution 67/226 on the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review [QCPR] of operational activities for development of the United Nations system.” The UNDS comprises the activities of some 30 agencies – coordinated by the UN Development Group – and the intergovernmental bodies that provide guidance and oversight, such as the Economic and [...]

Barbara Adams, with the Global Policy Forum, talked about the money the U.S. contributes to the United Nations and how that amount compares to contributions by other countries. She also discussed the efficiency of U.N. programs. This program was part of C-SPAN’s “Your Money” series. Each Monday morning the last hour of “Washington Journal” is devoted to a federal program, focusing on its mission, participants, and cost.

By Barbara Adams and Gretchen Luchsinger

A critical issue repeatedly arising in the post-2015 negotiations relates to responsibility. There is shared responsibility, the preference of rich countries who would like to shift traditional official development assistance (ODA) and other “burdens” given the “rise” of some developing countries. There is common but differentiated responsibility, stressed by developing countries to link common commitment with the reality of varying capacities.

Debates also circle, directly or otherwise, around the role of the state, with [...]

With pens still hovering over the Addis Ababa Action Plan, the outcome agreement for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3), there is already a sense that for all the recent talk at the UN about ambition and transformation, it is falling short. For a financing document, the Action Plan includes an impressive number of references to issues at the core of sustainable and inclusive development, like social protection, essential services, decent work for all and sustainable industrialization [...]

By Barbara Adams, Gretchen Luchsinger

It is not surprising that the political battles have already become fierce in the concurrent negotiations for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) and the post-2015 development agenda with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At stake is who will shape the agenda—and how much real impact it will have.

What is the direction of the “transformation” that is now so frequently discussed in both talks? Are we headed towards a world of [...]

The new book “Food Security Governance; Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations” by Nora McKeon explores the global food governance at a crossroads. The global food crisis from 2008 affirmed that the struggle over the global food system is not between farmers in the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’, but an intensified struggle between two opposing pathways for food and agriculture: those upholding the dominant status quo model of industrial agriculture and those struggling for alternative models emphasizing local diversified and [...]

Grassroots groups from across the world have written to all UN Member States to call for an open, fair and inclusive process to select the best possible candidate for Secretary-General of the UN. Signatories include Avaaz, Amnesty International, CIVICUS, Equality Now, FEMNET, Forum-Asia, Global Policy Forum, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Social Watch and Third World Network. The letter coincides with the launch of the 1 for 7 Billion campaign, which is calling for an end to the secret deals [...]

Grassroots groups from across the world have written to all UN Member States to call for an open, fair and inclusive process to select the best possible candidate for Secretary-General of the UN. Signatories include Avaaz, Amnesty International, CIVICUS, Equality Now, FEMNET, Forum-Asia, Global Policy Forum, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Social Watch and Third World Network. The letter coincides with the launch of the 1 for 7 Billion campaign, which is calling for an end to the secret deals [...]

A vibrant civil society, effective national and international human rights monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and the increased participation of women in all decision-making processes are essential to the prevention and resolution of conflict. It is in this light that the advocacy organization International Service for Human Rights has called upon the UN Security Council to strengthen its relationship with civil society and its focus on the promotion and protection of human rights. Whilst the UN Security Council has made important [...]

A broad coalition of NGOs from various countries is inviting other interested organizations, academcis and other progressive political actors to contribute to a new website on EU investment policy: EU-SecretDeals.info will publish negotiating texts from anonymous sources, and provide critical analysis of these texts. By this, they hope to enable parliamentarians, academics, civil society organisations, media and the public to understand what the EU, the US and Canada are trying to do during the negotiations.

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 [...]