by Guido Montani
In 1944, the first United Nations institutions were born in Bretton Woods. On September 22, 2024, eighty years later, the UN General Assembly approved, in New York, a Pact for the Future proposing the renewal of the UN to guarantee peace and prosperity to all the inhabitants of the planet.
It is a necessary decision because the contemporary world is profoundly different from that of the end of the Second World War. At that time, even before the war ended, the two superpowers had agreed on the general lines of the new international organization, which would replace the failed League of Nations. Today, one of the two superpowers no longer exists, the surviving superpower is increasingly reluctant to perform the task of world policeman, and new great powers are active in world politics, primarily China. The world has become multipolar, wars are becoming more frequent, disputes between rich and poor countries are exacerbating and the ecological catastrophe looms over the future of the planet.
The Pact for the Future is a clearly compromise document, to satisfy all 193 members of the United Nations, but it contains some hypotheses for reform that could allow for a serious renewal, if the will of national governments and their citizens to face the challenges facing future generations is real. It is in fact to future generations that this complex Pact (61 pages) is addressed as a priority.
Here are its chapters: 1. Sustainable development and financing for development; 2. International peace and security; 3. Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation; 4. Youth and future generations; 5. Transforming global governance. The introduction states that the future of humanity is threatened by its inability to govern itself and that the three pillars of the United Nations – sustainable development, peace and security, and human rights – are of equal importance and interdependent. You can't have one without having the others.
Let us now briefly see the main contents of the five chapters. The first, dedicated to sustainable development, reaffirms the commitment to respect the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda by 2030, including the Rio Declaration which includes the principle of the common but differentiated responsibility of each government. It is a question of recognising that the emerging countries are not responsible for the damage to the environment caused by the countries that have started the process of industrialisation in past centuries. This requires richer countries to commit to supporting the development and nature conservation priorities of emerging countries. The goal of poverty eradication must be considered an integral part of the 2030 Agenda. The most developed countries must devote 0.7% of their GDP to development assistance and 0.15% to countries with the greatest difficulties. Finally, a trading system based on multilateralism must be re-established. The World Trade Organization (WTO) must be reformed. The protection of oceans, glaciers and forests and their ecosystems must be ensured.
The second chapter concerns international peace and security. The central concern is the return to war even of countries that are supposed to guarantee peace and security as members of the Security Council (SC). The risk of nuclear war looms over the future of humanity. It denounces the continuous violation of international law and calls for friendly relations between the states that have signed the Charter of the United Nations. Member countries should renounce the use of military force and resolve their disputes by activating diplomatic channels in order to respect the principle of the sovereign equality of all nations. A new Agenda for World Peace is needed. A culture of peace must be developed, respect for human rights must be affirmed, and all forms of genocide and crimes against humanity must be combated. Finally, it is necessary to reduce expenditure on armaments and to respect international law. War crimes and crimes against humanity must be punished. The International Court of Justice must be put in a position to regulate conflicts between states (however, in a subsequent paragraph it is stated that "Member States" bear the primary responsibility for preventing conflicts and peacebuilding). The creation of a world free of atomic weapons is invoked because "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
The third chapter, on science and technology, denounces the situation of billions of people, especially in developing countries, who do not have access to basic technological resources. The United Nations must ensure that scientific and technological research is ethically oriented towards the promotion of human rights, and also calls on the private sector to ensure that this orientation is respected. Finally, the most vulnerable and disabled individuals must be able to benefit from the necessary innovations and technological assistance. International cooperation in scientific research must be free from any political conditioning. Finally, Annex I is dedicated to an in-depth analysis of the developments, possible applications and regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The fourth chapter is dedicated to young people, their future and the need for their collaboration with the United Nations. For this reason, a very detailed Declaration on future generations is annexed. By future generations the Pact means not only the young people alive today but also those who have not yet been born. It proposes the creation of a Global Youth Investment Platform to finance youth programs also at the level of individual countries. Of course, the rights of young people, especially girls, must be respected, avoiding any form of discrimination, intolerance or racism. It is proposed to create a youth representation within the United Nations, thanks to the presence of youth representatives from each country. A United Nations Youth Fund will be created.
The fifth chapter is dedicated to global governance. The revival of multilateralism and international cooperation will depend on what governability will be established. The democratic representation of all countries at world level must be strengthened, without any discrimination. Precise rules must be established for the financing of the United Nations and its bodies. The Security Council is expected to be reformed, to make it more efficient and representative. To this end, Africa must be considered as a priority, because it is the continent least represented in the SC, but it is also necessary to ensure the presence of the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. The issue of the veto in the SC must be reconsidered. The relationship between the SC and the General Assembly must be rethought. Finally, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) must be reformed. International finance must be mobilized to ensure greater assistance to emerging and most needy countries, especially the most indebted ones. Among the problems of global governance, particular attention is paid to the exploitation of space and the oceans.
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There are at least two aspects of the proposals contained in Pact for the Future that deserve to be emphasized: the first is the concept of Global Governance, which does not appear in the Charter of the United Nations, the second is the particular attention to young people and future generations. These two aspects are related, because Global Governance consolidates and evolves if it obtains growing public support, not unlike what happens to a national government towards its citizens. In essence, the idea of a Global Governance that is increasingly capable of responding to the expectations of the citizens of the world, and therefore is increasingly democratic, is a hypothesis that is not explicit, but implicit, of the Pact. It might therefore be suggested that a first step in this direction is the creation of a Consultative Assembly, or World Parliament of young people coming from each member state. This first form of experimental democracy could, when the time is ripe, allow the creation of a World Parliament (UNPA), as some national parliaments and the European Parliament are already requesting.
The UNPA would work alongside the General Assembly, where national governments are represented.
The concept of Global Governance must now be clarified, because it allows for a twofold interpretation: the first is international governance, the second is supranational governance. Let's clarify this difference with some examples. As far as policies to combat climate change are concerned, conferences, called COPs, are convened every year to decide which policies to approve. However, these policies are not binding, so each national government when it has to respond to national requests, which it considers more urgent, forgets to implement the environmental policies agreed in the COP. This is international governance. Supranational governance would consist of the decision to entrust the Secretary-General of the United Nations with the power to sanction, for example by paying a fine equal to the cost of inaction, the defaulting national government.
A second example concerns the proposal for a new Bretton Woods. In 1944, two plans were presented, the White Plan which envisaged the dollar as the international reserve currency, and the Keynes Plan which envisaged the bancor, based on the dollar and the pound, as the international reserve currency. The Keynes Plan could be considered supranational, in the sense that it envisaged a two-heads governance. Today, IMF reform could use the bancor of the 21st century, namely Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a basket that includes five currencies: the dollar, the euro, the renminbi, the yen and the pound. If the bancor were adopted as a reserve currency by all national central banks, it would also become the currency of commercial and financial exchanges. The IMF would become the world's central bank with the power to regulate the volume of currency issuance and interest rates. The governance of the five countries would be a first step to involve all the countries of the world, rich and poor, in the management of the world economy.
One last consideration. European integration has proceeded on the basis of a progressive attribution of powers to the European Union in the areas of democracy (the European Parliament) and Economic and Monetary Union. This process has made it possible to abolish internal borders between European countries and to create European citizenship. If the United Nations proceeded in this direction, it would become the common home of the citizens of the world.
Guido Montani
Originally published in Italian on “Euractiv”, September 25th, 2024
