The Platform on Global Security, Justice & Governance Innovation is an initiative of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 Program.
In seeking to advance the recommendations of the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, Just Security 2020 aims to build a more capable United Nations and other global institutions to better cope with existing and new global challenges, in the face of growing mass violence in fragile states, the threat of runaway climate change, and fears of devastating cross-border economic shocks and cyber-attacks. Effective problem solving requires both global collaboration and attention to serious deficits of justice as well as security, to create what we call “just security.” The program gives particular attention to initiating and influencing preparations for a Leaders Summit in September 2020 in New York on United Nations renewal, innovation, and reform (visit: http://un2020.org/).
From 2014 through 2016, the Stimson Center, in collaboration with partner institutions from around the world, led a program of research and advocacy designed to jumpstart discussion and development of the tools and reforms needed to build more effective and legitimate responses to global governance problems of the 21st century. The initial launch of the Commission’s Report “Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance”, on June 16, 2015 at the Peace Palace in The Hague, generated extensive international media coverage. The subsequent United Nations Headquarters launch was keynoted by UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, followed by similar pubic events in Abuja, London, Ottawa, Tokyo, and elsewhere.
Since April 2016, the goals of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 program include:
- convening global policy dialogues to promote consensus on priority global governance reform innovations in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict management, climate governance, and global cyber-economic management;
- conducting research, policy analysis, and outreach to refresh and refine the findings and recommendations of the Albright-Gambari Commission and pair them with other global governance renewal and reform innovations; and
- developing a Platform on Global Security, Justice & Governance Reform to promote results of the project’s research, coalition-building, and advocacy agenda.
In June 2016, an inaugural global policy dialogue on Coping with Violent Conflict & State Fragility was held at the United Nations with Professor Ibrahim Gambari on the one-year anniversary of the Commission’s Report, in cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Mission of the United Arab Emirates to the UN. In July 2017, a second global policy dialogue on the United Nations’ Sustaining Peace Agenda was convened in New York with the participation of twenty UN Missions and the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly, in cooperation with the Mission of Qatar to the UN and the Savannah Center for Diplomacy, Democracy, and Development (Abuja). In addition, a peacebuilding experts dialogue was co-convened by the Stimson Center and Alliance for Peacebuilding in December 2017 in Washington, D.C. to feed ideas into the April 2018 UN High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, alongside eight other public events on sustaining peace and global governance reform convened at the Stimson Center between 2016 and 2018.
Research from leading international scholars for the Albright-Gambari Commission was updated, in 2018, in Just Security in an Undergoverned World, published by Oxford University Press, which features a Foreword by Secretary Madeleine Albright and Professor Ibrahim Gambari. This companion volume to the Albright-Gambari Commission report was undertaken to further inform evidence-based and forward-looking discussions on improving global institutions, examined through a unique “just security” conceptual framework.
Global policy dialogues are now under preparation on the themes of preventive action, sustaining peace, and global governance in Doha, Qatar (December 2018), on global security, justice, and economic institutions in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (June 2019), and on climate governance in Seoul, South Korea (November 2019). These forums will feed into the new Platform on Global Security, Justice & Governance Innovation, which constitutes a diverse, global multi-stakeholder network to advance progressive global governance innovation and renewal. Example activities to be undertaken by the Platform include:
- Employing social media (including an interactive web platform that showcases, for example, public campaigning tools, information on network partner institutions, and global public and expert e-consultations) and social mobilization campaigns.
- Conducting regular public outreach through television, radio, and print media.
- Directing outreach to government, business, and international organization leaders, including UN Mission, G20 country, and regional organization member state consultations and discussions with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his team.
- Initiating a specialized “Youth Engagement Track” to target and harness the talents and idealism of students and young professionals.
- Supporting closely related initiatives, including Together First, UN2020, the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, 1 for 7 Billion, and the Global Town Halls Project.
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