UN75 Global Governance Forum: Overview

Designing a Roadmap to The Future We Want, The UN We Need

As we approach the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations under the banner “the future we want, the UN we need”, we reflect on the complex challenges facing our world, including cross-border health pandemics, economic shocks, inequality, climate instability, and threats to peace and security, and bring forward a call to action. Talking about what the UN system can do for us and the changes required is important. An even more critical challenge is to engage stakeholders from within and outside the world body to co-create partnerships and pathways to the future we fervently desire and a United Nations that inspires and serves all humanity.

How can we harness our collective strength among governments, global civil society, UN agencies, and the business community to design the Future We Want, The UN We Need?

WHEN: September 16 & 17, 2020 / September 18: Community-driven Sessions
WHERE: Virtual Event
WHO: Stakeholders from civil society, scholars, policy entrepreneurs, UN system bodies and Member States, the private sector, and philanthropic institutions.

 

Our Basic Goal: In connection with the world body’s 75th anniversary, the UN75 Global Governance Forum seeks to promote a more inclusive and effective United Nations through dialogue and recommendations that better harness the ideas, capabilities, and networks of both state and non-state actors for achieving the UN’s commitment to peace, sustainable development, human rights, and a stable climate.

OVERVIEW

On September 16th and 17th, 2020, we will gather virtually to honor the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. A cornerstone of international order since 1945, the United Nations must continue to adapt and innovate to respond to new threats, challenges, and opportunities in our current age of complexity. On September 18 we will hold the UN75 community-driven sessions which will contribute to the UN75 Global Governance Forum’s overall goal to promote a more inclusive and effective United Nations through dialogue and recommendations.

We will convene stakeholders from civil society (including youth), scholars, policy entrepreneurs, UN system bodies and Member States, the private sector, and philanthropic institutions to honor the principles of multilateral cooperation upon which the UN was founded.

In this spirit, participants will seek collectively to raise the ambition of the UN75 Declaration—to be finalized in June 2020 by Member States—by initiating new multi-stakeholder pilot projects toward the realization of “the future we want, the UN we need.” In an era of accelerated connectivity and advanced technology, we aspire to forge a roadmap to bring a fresh, modern perspective to the UN Charter’s founding principles to update our vision and promote a truly “people-centered” architecture for global collective action.

AGENDA

  • Partnership Track Discussions (Invitation Only)
    13 July – 4 September, 2020
  • Innovation Track E-Consultation and Webinar Series (Invitation Only)
    Held between August 3rd – 30th, with weekly webinars held from 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM EST (NY time) on Aug. 5th (Global Economic Governance & Sustainable Development), Aug. 12th (Peace & Security), Aug. 19th (Human Rights, Humanitarian Action & Inclusive Governance), and Aug. 26th (Climate Governance).
  • Plenary Sessions
    September 16 & 17 from 9:00 AM to 1:30 PM EST
  • Community-driven Sessions
    September 18 from 9:00 AM to 1:30 PM EST
  • *Please click the Agenda for further details

BACKGROUND

Since its founding in 1945, governments have strived through the United Nations to create a system that addresses global challenges around the three main pillars: Peace & Security, Development, and Human Rights. Climate governance has now, in effect, become the world body’s fourth pillar. Though the emergence of global civil society and the business community have added new capabilities to our global governance system, the complexity of the modern world—including, for starters, the harmful spread of the COVID-19 virus and its devastating financial and economic consequences, the disruptive effects of new technologies, the threat of runaway climate change, rising violence in fragile states and regions, and record migration and refugee levels—is outpacing our collective ability to manage globalization for the benefit of all nations and peoples.

Today, learning from both failures and hard-fought successes, we know much more about what an effective holistic process for progressive global change looks like—harnessing the thinking, resources, and connections among state and non-state actors across the UN system’s four pillars (i.e., building effective partnerships)—and the specific global norms, policies, and institutional reforms needed (i.e., promoting innovation), to achieve a new end state that better serves the shared aspirations of all humanity.

The UN75 Global Governance Forum is premised on the idea that diverse stakeholders, working collaboratively and empowered by new technologies, represent the best way forward toward achieving both the future people worldwide are calling for and the new United Nations we so urgently need.

FORUM GOALS

  • Initiate a new generation of scale-able, multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives that better harness, for 2020 and beyond, the ideas, capabilities and networks of state & non-state actors for achieving the UN’s commitment to peace, sustainable development, human rights, and a stable climate.
  • Build consensus around a strategy for a select number of “Global Governance Institutional, Policy, and Normative Innovations.”

 

The UN75 Global Governance Forum seeks to promote a more inclusive and effective United Nations through dialogue and recommendations that better harness the ideas, capabilities, and networks of both state and non-state actors for achieving the UN’s commitment to peace, sustainable development, human rights, and a stable climate.