The UN at 70: Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Author | Madeleine K. Albright,Ibrahim A. Gambari |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12292 |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
The UN at 70: Confronting the Crisis of
Global Governance
Madeleine K. Albright and Ibrahim A. Gambari
Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance
This fall, the United Nations (UN) marks its 70th anniver-
sary. Mandated to ‘save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war’and to seek a ‘life in larger freedom‘the
UN has helped the world succeed in halving extreme
global poverty, slowing the spread of nuclear weapons,
and managing many long-standing conflicts (United
Nations, 1945).
Yet, hardly anybody with an insight into global politics
or economics would use the words ‘just’or ‘secure’to
describe the world today. Global governance finds itself
in a state of deep crisis. Mounting evidence suggests that
global institutions and the broader international commu-
nity are losing the battle against the most pressing secu-
rity and justice challenges of our time. From Syria and
Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa, rising violence has erased
human rights, increased mass atrocities, and reversed the
global decline in political violence seen since the end of
the Cold War (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2014).
Climate change, cyber attacks and the cross-border eco-
nomic shocks all carry grave implications for global secu-
rity and justice too.
Against this backdrop, the Commission on Global
Security, Justice & Governance set out one year ago to
address the present crisis of global governance. Our effort
complemented other reviews focused solely on climate,
cyberspace, financial contagion, peacekeeping, or peace-
building, touching instead on all of these, their relation-
ships, and their implications for global institutions and
governance. We concluded that the world needs a new
kind of leadership that transcends national borders and
leverages new tools, networks, and different kinds of pub-
lic, private, and mixed institutions designed to deal effec-
tively with 21st century global challenges.
1
We further
believe that the period between the UN’s 70th anniversary
and its 75th anniversary –while not the underlying reason
for a new reform effort –offers a unique opportunity to
intensify efforts to tackle these challenges through innova-
tive approaches to global governance.
A new global ethic
One of the Commission’s founding aims was to ensure
that neither security nor justice imperatives are brushed
aside in debates over global governance. Indeed, con-
temporary understanding of security extends far beyond
the interests of and pressures on the state to include the
needs of and the pressures on people. But security is a
hollow concept unless accompanied by justice. Justice, in
turn, needs to be framed in terms of achieving a basic
level of liberty and opportunity, while reducing social
and economic inequalities in order to benefit, in particu-
lar, the least advantaged in the world at large. In other
words, the quest for justice should aim at reducing the
abuses, discrimination, and inequities perceived and
experienced by much of humankind.
2
To us, it is clear that justice is essential to safeguarding
human security and that a just society is an illusion with-
out security. The Commission’s report, ‘Confronting the
Crisis of Global Governance’, therefore brings these two
concepts together through the prism of ‘just security’
(Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance,
2015). Serving as both a new global ethic and analytical
lens, just security fosters a combined focus on inclusive
decision making, fairness and personal safety, and a
sense of greater urgency to tackling often intractable
problems across and within borders.
The goal of just security is to forge a mutually support-
ive global system of accountable, fair, and effective gov-
ernance and sustainable peace. This vision is rooted in
long-standing international commitments to human
rights, international law, and the critical role of flexible
and evolving multilateral institutions, states and nonstate
actors in global governance.
Beyond the UN and other global institutions, a growing
number of regional organizations, including the African
Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU
and the Union of South American Nations are shaping glo-
bal trends. Equally important are civil society, the business
community, municipalities and the media, each offering
unique perspectives and assets varying in size and reach.
For good global governance and a resilient global
order that empowers people and nations, security and
justice must prevail across each of these actors and
levels of governance, and their linkages actively pro-
moted. Lack of either security or justice on any level,
from local to global, not only contributes to instability,
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2015) 6:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12292
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 4 . November 2015
510
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