Adopting the new Sustainable Development Goals in September, 2015 in New York. Stuart Ramson / Press Association. All rights reserved.Next week the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) opens in New York. In four years the UN will be 75 years old. Are we governing globalization properly?
The driving goal for the design of the UN was to prevent another war between major powers, to avoid another Depression and to not replicate the League of Nations. By the time the UN Charter was adopted these concerns were not equally important – only the Security Council dealing with war and peace was given mandatory authority. Subsequently the Bretton Woods agreements, which removed core economic issues from the United Nations agenda, gave de facto mandatory authority to the Executive Directors and Executive Boards of Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs). Over the decades, the major aspirations of the international community shifted. As new global aspirations were identified, new, largely autonomous institutions were created without the equivalent mandatory authority in their designated areas [i].
As each generation recognized that the global governance system was not keeping up with the needs of the world, there were regular reform efforts. The agreement to replace the Commission on Sustainable Development with the HLPF, the efforts to ‘reform’ the Security Council, and the campaigns to adjust the proportional voting system at the IMF are all part of this tradition.
