An Innovation Agenda for UN 75

June 2019

To do a better job of preventing armed conflict and helping its victims, avoiding runaway climate change, averting cross-border economic shocks, and harnessing the ideas, networks, and capabilities of governments, civil society, and the private sector, the world needs a new kind of leadership and vision, combined with new norms, tools, and institutions.

In response, the newly released An Innovation Agenda for UN 75 – which updates the analysis and prioritizes the recommendations from the 2015 report of the Albright-Gambari Commission and its companion volume, Just Security in an Undergoverned World – offers 20 global ideas for the United Nations’ 75th anniversary and Leaders Summit, in 2020, with the goal of renewing and invigorating our system of global governance to better meet twenty-first-century threats, challenges, and opportunities.

The new report presents a bold, yet practical “Roadmap to 2020” designed to mobilize a wide range of actors and constituencies and to produce results at the intersection of global security and justice – preventing violent extremism, mitigating and adapting to climate change, governing our hyperconnected global economy, and safeguarding human rights – to make the world a little more just and secure.

“The international institutions built since 1945 to help nations manage and resolve their problems peacefully—and together—are being weakened to a degree not seen since their founding. Yet dealing with global issues calls for policies and actions beyond the writ or capabilities of any one state.”

Foreword to An Innovation Agenda for UN75 (2019), Madeleine Albright and Ibrahim Gambari

The report is intended to complement the advocacy efforts of civil society organizations such as the UN 2020 initiative and Together First campaign and encourages governments and the UN system to consider its recommendations in the run-up to the world body’s 75th anniversary.

An Innovation Agenda for UN 75 was initially presented at the Global Policy Dialogue on “Global Security, Justice, and Economic Institutions” organized earlier this month at the Stimson Center, which enjoyed contributions from the President of the General Assembly, H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Nigerian Foreign Minister and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari, Chair of the World Refugee Council and former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, UN 75 Special Advisor and Under-Secretary-General Fabrizio Hochschild, Qatari MFA Director of Policy and Planning Dr. Khalid Al-Khater, EU Ambassador to the UN João Vale de Almeida, and Ugandan Ambassador to the UN Adonia Ayebare, among other leaders and experts.

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