Universalizing Development, a Second UN Charter and the State of the World

State of the World Conference:
Implementing the Pact for the Future

On Wednesday, 25 September, SIPA's UN Studies program and the Institute of Global Politics co-hosted the inaugural State of the World Conference on Implementing the Pact of the Future. If you missed the event you can watch the recording here:

• Opening Remarks by IO/UNS Director, Prof. Daniel Naujoks (click here to watch)
• Panel 1: Reform of Global Governance (click here to watch)
• Panel 2: Reform of the International Financial Architecture (click here to watch)

Panel 1: Reform of Global Governance, moderated by SIPA Professor Jean-Marie Guéhenno focused on the Summit's key outcomes with regard to global governance and how to implement them meaningfully. Featuring Michèle Griffin, Director of Our Common Agenda and the Summit of the Future, Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General; Augusto Lopez-Claros, Executive Director of the Global Governance Forum and MIA Candidate 2025 Saru Duckworth, the panel discussed a stronger role of the UN General Assembly, meaningful youth participation and the role of universities and other stakeholders to support the implementation through advisory, research, and other means.

Panel 2: Reform of the International Financial Architecture, moderated by SIPA Professor José Antonio Ocampo, discussed how the Pact’s vision to accelerate reform of the international financial architecture, including addressing existing inequities, mobilizing adequate financing to meet the SDGs, ensuring countries can borrow sustainably to invest in their long-term development, shielding countries equitably during systemic shocks, and enabling the international financial architecture to meet the challenge of climate change. Panelists Shari Spiegel, Director of the UN's Financing for Sustainable Development Office; Iyabo Masha, Director and Head of Secretariat, Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs and Development (G-24); David Passarelli, Director of the UNU Centre for Policy Research and MIA Candidate Ariadne Mael N. Putri discussed in detail how the outcome of the Summit of the Future can be implemented in the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4).

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In Universalizing UN Development: A Forgotten Task for Effective Multi-lateralism, Max-Otto Baumann, senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability and Adolf Kloke-Lesch, former Director General of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and former Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Germany, argue that the UN must build up an operational cooperation function within high-income countries. They argue that this is imperative if the UN wants to effectively address the challenges of global sustainable development. With growing pressure on planetary boundaries, interlinkages between countries (including through spillover effects), and the “blurring of North-South boundaries”, the need for sustainable development can no longer be seen as a function of a country’s (lower) income status. In addition, there is a political need for a new global governance, marked by equal relations and mutual accountability of UN member states. The present UN development system operates as a shadow of the traditional development cooperation regime, which is based on the concept that one group of countries has the problems and the other the solutions. If the UN development system is mainly understood as a service provider for “developing countries” only, funded by the rich countries, it only perpetuates symbolic inequalities and fosters operational weaknesses.

Universalizing UN development work requires and presupposes a profound conceptual change, but Baumann and Kloke-Lesch argue that this change would be rather inexpensive. They propose practical steps towards universality and a global agenda beyond 2030. 
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Over the past two years, the Global Governance Forum organized a group of scholars, experts, practitioners, and former senior government officials, with deep knowledge of the United Nations, to work on the draft of a potential revised UN Charter. In A Second United Nations Charter: Politically Impossible or Inevitable?  Augusto Lopez-Claros, Executive Director
of the Global Governance Forum, shares insights from this review and the proposals to amend the UN Charter. The suggestions include increasing the number of Security Council members, adding a Parliamentary Assembly that would turn the UN from an organization of states into an organization of states and peoples and thus enhance its representativeness and democratic legitimacy; and creating an Earth System Council tasked with environmental governance. Reviewing the UN’s collective security mechanism, the proposed second charter would review the need for rapid reaction capacities to minimize extensive and ongoing civilian harms, develop a more robust system of arms control and disarmament, and establish non-consensual collective enforcement means. Lopez-Claros suggests specific reforms for ECOSOC and suggests that the International Court of Justice be given compulsory jurisdiction, including a review function (akin to that of a constitutional court) for the UN itself. The think-piece calls for a UN Charter Review Conference and emphasized that the benefits of a fundamental UN reform outweigh its cost. The Second Charter initiative offers hope through sober, careful, tempered, and timely proposals for the next stage of global governance. 

Read the full think-piece here and feel free to engage with this think-piece's announcements on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.