{"id":144090,"date":"2019-09-30T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=144090"},"modified":"2019-09-28T08:05:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T07:05:06","slug":"u-n-general-assembly-can-it-provide-the-needed-global-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/u-n-general-assembly-can-it-provide-the-needed-global-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"U.N. General Assembly: Can It Provide the Needed Global Leadership?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

27 Sep 2019 – <\/em>The international relations specialist Stanley Hoffmann once quipped “Goals are easy to describe. What matters more is a strategy for reaching them.” <\/em>\u00a0The United Nations through its annual debates in the General Assembly, its special world conferences such as those devoted to the environment, population, food, women, urbanization, and within the Specialized Agencies have created goals for a world public policy in the interests of all humanity.\u00a0 There are three important phases of this world public policy: formulation, implementation and evaluation. Thus, this September the UNGA began with a “Climate Action Summit” to evaluate governmental efforts to meet the challenges of climate change. Government leaders set out what they have done, or plan to do, at the national level but they said relatively little on what they could do together.<\/p>\n

The Climate Action Summit was followed by the policy statements of national governments: Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Recep Tajyip Erdogan, Emmanuel Macron, Hassan Rauhani, Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson, Narendra Modi and Abdel Fatth al Sisi.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All except al Sisi came to national power through elections and not military coups.\u00a0 Thus in some way, they represent the degree of awareness of world issues and the priorities of their electors.<\/p>\n

The question asked many years ago by the world citizen Norman Cousins,<\/p>\n

\u201cWho Speaks for Man”?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To meet the major challenges of world-wide issues, strong leadership is necessary.\u00a0 Yet the avenues for leadership at the world level are difficult to trace.\u00a0 Leadership at the national level is usually clearly structured in a pyramid with the office of President at the top, with Cabinet Ministers, the higher ranks of the military just below.\u00a0 There may be a vast informal network of influential advisors, business leaders, the press – all with leadership roles, but the formal structure of governance is hierarchical and clearly defined.\u00a0\u00a0 People generally expect the Prime Minister or the President to lead.\u00a0 In fact, he is judged on whether or not he provides such leadership.<\/p>\n

At the world level, there is no world government as such, and a strong leader at the national level may play little role on the world level.\u00a0 What the Commission on Global Governance wrote in 1994 remains true today:<\/p>\n

“At the moment, political caution, national concerns, short-term problems, and a certain fatigue with international causes have combined to produce a dearth of leadership on major international issues.\u00a0 The very magnitude of global problems such as poverty, population or consumerism seems to have daunted potential international leaders.\u00a0 And yet without courageous, long-term leadership at every level – international and national – it is impossible to create and sustain constituencies powerful and reliable enough to make an impact on problems that will determine, one way or another, the future of the human race on this planet.”\u00a0 <\/em>(1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, there is a need for constant leadership and direction at the world level.\u00a0 There is a need to maintain and rebuild enthusiasm, to reset the course when policies do not work out as expected, to keep up a momentum and an enthusiasm.\u00a0 The United Nations is the only universal organization at the world level, and thus it is from within the United Nations that leadership at the world level must come.\u00a0 Leaders within the U.N. system must be able to reach beyond the member governments – at times over the heads of current government office holders – to the people of the world.<\/p>\n

There are two positions of authority in the ill-defined pyramid structure of the United Nations.\u00a0 One is the Secretary-General; the other is the President of the General Assembly who is elected for one year at a time.\u00a0 The President of the current, 74th session is Tijjani Muhammed-Bande of Nigeria.\u00a0 There have been times when the head of one of the Specialized Agencies of the U.N. or the financial institutions or U.N. programs have provided leadership but usually on only one or two subjects.<\/p>\n

Especially on the resolution of armed conflicts, people look to the Secretary-General for leadership.\u00a0 In some cases, the Secretary-General has been able to play a central role.\u00a0 As the servant of the Security Council, the Secretary-General has been able to play a mobilizing role in times of conflict and political crisis in those cases when the Security Council has been unified behind a decision.\u00a0 Since the chairman of the Security Council is a national diplomat and serves on a rotating basis only for one month, he cannot play a real mobilizing role nor is he perceived as a world leader.<\/p>\n

Some hope that the President of the U.N. General Assembly, who is in post for a full year, could play a leadership role.\u00a0 So far such hopes have not been realized in practice. It would be difficult to find many people who can name the last five Presidents of the General Assembly or to cite much of what they have done other than presiding over meetings.<\/p>\n

Today, with real challenges to humanity, with a reform-minded Secretary-General who for a decade faced refugee issues, we may see some of the marks of strong world leadership.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) The Commission on Global Governance. Our Global Neighbourhood <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)<\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a><\/em>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues<\/em>, and <\/em>editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Sep 2019 – The international relations specialist Stanley Hoffmann once quipped “Goals are easy to describe. What matters more is a strategy for reaching them.” This September the UNGA began with a “Climate Action Summit” to evaluate governmental efforts to meet the challenges of climate change. Government leaders set out what they have done, or plan to do, at the national level but they said relatively little on what they could do together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[884,124],"class_list":["post-144090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-unga","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}