Mainstream WeeklyGLOBAL LEADERSHIP AND GLOBAL SYSTEMIC ISSUES
South, North and the United Nations in a 21st Century World - II
by Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Branislav Gosovic
The following is the second part of a lengthy article being published here in three parts. The first part appeared in Mainstream (April 23, 2011). The next part will be carried in the following issue. —Editor
6. The United Nations of the Future—boosting its Capacities for Global
Leadership roles
A vigorous, strong, fully mandated, properly constituted and resourced world institution is needed to perform global leadership roles in the key issue areas of general importance to the inter-national community. Such leadership— democratic, participatory, representative, enlightened, universal and based on intellectual excellence—is required to help meet the multiple challenges and vast responsibilities of the international agenda.
Increasing the strength and capacity of the United Nations should be recognised as a priority objective. It should be the world institution that governs and orients the globalisation processes and provides the necessary intellectual, policy and practical leadership needed by the international community to confront global systemic issues and take appropriate decisions.
It is important therefore for the international community to begin thinking seriously of more advanced institutional arrangements for global cooperation, for the immediate and more distant future.
A number of initiatives, reports, recommen-dations, books and studies on how to strengthen the UN organisation and overcome its inadequacies were produced over the past few decades, but these have been largely neglected. However, they contain many ideas that could prove useful. Some of the lessons learned and experiences gained in regional integration efforts could no doubt also prove valuable in institution-building at the global level.17
The institution-building advances normally occur through incremental change, induced by global crises and new requirements in a dynamic world system and reflecting the underlying power relations. However, the evolving situation does not allow for the usual muddling-through mode, or waiting for a systemic collapse to induce institutional change and improvement. Rather, it calls for a comprehensive, well-thought- out approach towards bolstering the roles of the UN system in the 21st century.18
Below, we highlight several familiar, albeit politically controversial, structural measures and improvements which could contribute to streng-thening today’s United Nations and should figure in the evolution of its more ambitious, future variants.
The mandate of the United Nations: The mandates, embodied in the UN Charter and in those of the agencies and organisations of the UN system, are sufficiently broad and all-encompassing to accommodate the missions and objectives of the international organisations in the 21st century.
Nonetheless, there is a need to update, expand and reformulate a number of basic texts, documents and international treaties adopted in earlier periods, so that they reflect the changes that the international community is undergoing. Also, there is a need to bring under multilateral purview in the United Nations a number of both new and old areas that need global oversight, management and regulation. In this manner, the gaps that exist in the global edifice will be filled.
Non-state actors, such as transnational corpo-rations, global banking and investment, and the media did not figure on the global scene in the past but now play increasingly prominent roles in world affairs. Their presence needs to be formally recognised and they need to be subjected to regular multilateral scrutiny, appropriate action and disciplines, in particular with regard to issues that transcend the borders of any one state or are of general concern and importance.19
The predicament the United Nations is experiencing is that its mandate extends over a highly unequal world and a divided constituency. It includes the present as well as the concern for the future. Issues on its agenda, inherently complex and which would be difficult to deal with even in a hypothetically uniform and equitable community of like-minded nations, thus become quite formi-dable and are not prone to solutions.
Given the nature of today’s international community, the United Nations faces the underlying dilemma and tension in its work, namely, should it be an organisation of structural change, a role favoured by the developing countries, or should it be an organisation that does not challenge and in fact helps buttress the structural status quo, this being the preference of the North. This contradiction has stymied the organisation.
The efforts by the dominant group of developed countries to harness the organisation to its interests and goals explain many of the hardships that the United Nations has experienced and obstacles it has encountered in its work, institutional development and task expansion. The recent period of unipolarity and unrestrained unilateralism in the global arena, where the United Nations found itself cornered, has clearly exposed these underlying conflicts and tendencies.
Following this regression, one would like to see a renewed effort from the international community to enable and empower the United Nations to act as an institution in the forefront of change and progress, working for a better world, a mission inherent in its Charter and mandate.
The United Nations should thus play a leadership role in countering the global hegemony of power, in promoting worldwide development and the elimination of poverty and social marginalisation, and in democratising international affairs. It should strive to enhance a polycentric world system, and as its aspirational, long-term aim, it should focus its sights on a global community “for, by and of all