The rise of the global south profoundly changes the international governance system
After the end of World War II, the United States and other Western countries built an international economic system composed of a series of international mechanisms from different dimensions such as finance, investment, trade, and development. The establishment of the post-war international economic system played an important role in restoring and promoting economic stability and development. In the 1950s and 1960s, with the large number of developing countries joining, the representativeness of these international mechanisms led by Western countries has greatly improved. Since the 1980s and 1990s, the economic strength of developing countries has increased rapidly, and the world economy has generally shown a trend of "upward from east to west", but this huge change has not been reflected in the international mechanism accordingly, and the representativeness of developing countries has been underestimated. Against this background, mechanisms such as the New Development Bank of the BRICS, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, etc., formed by southern countries came into being.
What role did the post-war international mechanism play in global economic governance? What challenges does the current changes in the international landscape have posed to it? What is the future way out for reform? This issue's "Cover Topic" gives the answer.
Thank Ren Lin, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for helping this manuscript.
The following is the first article: "United Nations 80 Years: Growing and Growing in Global Governance".
——Editor's Notes
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. Since its birth, the United Nations has been committed to maintaining international peace and security, promoting global development, promoting and protecting human rights, and actively carrying out humanitarian assistance and international rule of law. All of these work have the nature and significance of global governance. It can be said that the United Nations has grown up in global governance and has become stronger in global governance.
May 25, 2023 On May 25, 2023, UN Secretary-General Guterres laid a wreath to the peacekeepers' monument to commemorate the peacekeepers who died in UN peacekeeping operations since 1948.
Start with global security governance
The original aspiration and mission of the founding of the United Nations is to prevent the world from falling into a new world war. Therefore, the focus and main content of the United Nations Charter is how to maintain international peace and security. The Charter rarely mentions "development", let alone the word "governance".
The emergence of atomic energy technology and nuclear weapons that developed rapidly during World War II was the first issue that the United Nations must deal with. On January 24, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly adopted its first resolution since its establishment, namely, the "Setting up the Committee to deal with issues arising from the discovery of atomic energy", and thus the United Nations started a global nuclear governance process with the preventive proliferation mechanism as its core. After 80 years of efforts, the United Nations has established a non-proliferation system composed of a series of resolution documents, treaties and institutions, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as its core. Although global nuclear governance faces limitations such as stagnation of nuclear disarmament, increased risk of nuclear proliferation, difficulty in fulfilling contracts, and increased threats to emerging technologies, certain results have been achieved in preventing nuclear proliferation, promoting nuclear disarmament, avoiding nuclear conflicts, and peaceful use of nuclear energy.
The direction and process of the world's development after World War II far exceeded the imagination of the drafters of the Charter. Two years after the founding of the United Nations, the world fell into a Cold War in the East and the West. Under the background and influence of the confrontation between the two major camps and the US-Soviet hegemony, many crises and conflicts have occurred around the world, the most serious of which are the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East, the India-Pakistan conflict in South Asia and the Korean War in Northeast Asia. The United Nations has actively and deeply intervened in these three regional conflicts. In the Middle East and South Asia, the United Nations pioneered peacekeeping operations in a spirit known as "Chapter 6.5 of the Charter" (between Chapter 6 "Peaceful Resolution" and Chapter 7 "Compulsory Means". Since then, peacekeeping operations have become the most important work of the United Nations in the field of peace and security. After nearly 80 years of evolution, especially with the changes in the international landscape and nature of conflict, the goals and functions of peacekeeping operations have undergone major adjustments. After several reforms, peace operations, together with conflict prevention, peacebuilding and peacekeeping operations have gone beyond the level of "action" and have "governance" significance. Re-understanding of peacekeeping or peace operations from the perspective and height of global security governance can reveal new values.
Non-proliferation and peacekeeping operations are the two main actions taken by the United Nations in the field of international peace and security after the founding of the United Nations, and have also become the two main lines of the United Nations' global security governance.
Dominate global development governance
After World War II, the IMF, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade assumed the main functions in promoting the world economy and international development. At least during the Cold War, the United Nations has not yet dominated the field of promoting international development.
In the 1950s and 1960s, new independent countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America joined the United Nations one after another. The number of UN member states increased from 60 in 1950 to 99 in 1960, and then to 127 in 1970. In 20 years, the number has doubled. The rapid growth of member states has important political significance to the United Nations. A large number of developing countries joining the United Nations has improved the universality and representation of the United Nations and changed the internal structure of the United Nations, that is, from the east-west structure confronting the two major camps to the north-south structure with different development levels, and the voting pattern of the United Nations has also changed. With the large number of developing countries joining, the development agenda has risen to one of the main causes of the United Nations. The establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1964, the founding of UNDP in 1965, the adoption of the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and the Programme of Action at the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, and the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, are all the results of the promotion of developing countries, reflecting that the United Nations focuses on development issues and plays an important role in promoting the interests of developing countries.
Overall, the United Nations serves Member States and people of the world through three stages of global development governance.
The first phase is four "ten-year international development strategies". From 1960 to 2000, the United Nations implemented four "ten-year international development strategies". The strategy proposes and enriches the connotation and extension of the concept of development, such as the right to development, international economic order, human development index, etc.; determines the international standards for official development assistance (0.7% of the total national income of developed countries); helps developing countries improve their development level and development capabilities through technical assistance, etc. Although the expected goals and effects have not been achieved, these efforts have laid the foundation for the United Nations to accelerate the governance of global development after entering the new century.
The second phase is the Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the United Nations proposed the Millennium Development Goals, which included eight goals, 18 quantifiable specific goals and 48 refined indicators, and placed them at the heart of the global development agenda, with its primary goal of eradicating extreme poverty. The Millennium Development Goals are formulated to address the most pressing development problems and development needs of developing countries. They were proposed by the Millennium Summit through the UN General Assembly resolution. They are the first quantifiable and time-bound target system formed by the United Nations in global development governance. The proposal of the Millennium Development Goals marks the launch of the real global development governance.
The third phase is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations Development Summit put forward 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 specific goals. The adoption of this agenda has become another milestone in the history of global development governance. It is not only the inheritance and continuation of the concepts and practices of global development governance, but also innovation and transcendence on this basis. It established a new concept of sustainable development that is in the trinity of economy, society and environment; it clearly put forward the connotation of global development for the first time - a truly "global" development including developed and developing countries; it built partnerships with governments, the private sector, civil society, the United Nations system and other parties, providing institutional guarantees for mobilizing various resources and forming a governance synergy.
Although the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been severely hindered and derailed by multiple challenges such as geopolitical conflicts, strategic competition for major powers, the new crown epidemic and climate change, the United Nations development governance system has become more professional and resilient and has dominated global development governance.
Target of Change
At present, the United Nations faces unprecedented challenges, both in the field of peace and security and in the field of development.
From the security perspective, with the intensification of geopolitical conflicts and competition among major powers, the global security governance deficit has become more serious. Whenever a permanent member initiates or participates in a war or supports one of the parties involved in a war, the Security Council is paralyzed, causing the authority and effectiveness of the United Nations to carry out global security governance. In addition, independent weapon systems, "decapitation operations", and intelligent war have also brought new problems to global security governance.
From the development perspective, the setback of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has put global development governance in a low point. In the 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report, the United Nations pointed out that the global annual financing gap for development reaches US$4.2 trillion. Several UN agencies have also issued warnings that ecosystems and the earth's climate system may have reached or even exceeded important critical points, or will lead to irreversible changes. The tariff war launched by the Trump administration in the United States is a "cut off the bottom of the fire" for the multilateral trading system centered on the World Trade Organization. Coupled with the deterioration of the international security environment, global development governance is difficult.
Faced with such severe challenges, in September 2021, the Secretary-General of the United Nations released the report on "Our Common Agenda", proposing that more inclusive, networked and more effective multilateralism is the way to deal with global challenges. In September 2024, the United Nations Future Summit passed the Future Compact, proposing 19 actions on global governance reform, focusing on reforms on peace and security architecture and international financial architecture, directly pointing to global security and global development governance. In March this year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations launched the three major reforms of the "United Nations 80th Anniversary Initiative" (efficiency improvement and work improvement, review of the implementation of mandated tasks, structural reforms and program adjustments) to strengthen the United Nations system.
It can be predicted that the focus of the United Nations will further shift towards global governance. In addition to continuing to carry out and strengthening global security governance and global development governance, the United Nations will take active actions in the following three major areas.
The first is global human rights governance. After the Cold War, human rights became one of the three pillars of the United Nations. After entering the new century, the United Nations proposed the "responsibility for protection" norm and established the Human Rights Council to replace the Human Rights Commission. By advocating mainstreaming of human rights, people-centered and human rights-based methods, the significance and value of human rights have been greatly enhanced. At present, the United Nations global human rights governance system has begun to take shape, but it still needs to be further enhanced.
The second is global scientific and technological governance. From nuclear governance during the Cold War to Internet governance after the Cold War, the United Nations has always played an important role in the field of global science and technology governance. In recent years, the General Assembly, UNESCO, Industrial Development Organization, International Telecommunications Union, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Health Organization, UNICEF, etc. within the United Nations system have taken actions to intervene in the field of artificial intelligence, and have issued resolutions and professional documents to build a governance framework and establish rules. The United Nations has become an indispensable part of global artificial intelligence governance.
The third is global public domain governance. Global public domains such as the network, polar regions, deep seas, outer space are jointly owned by mankind and are not dominated or governed by any country. This is the area in which the United Nations can play a unique role. As the most universal, representative and authoritative international organization, the United Nations is the best platform for global public domain governance. The United Nations has great potential in strengthening the international rule of law in the global public domain, advocating the concept of consultation, joint construction, sharing and governance, and building an international coordination mechanism in the global public domain.
(Author: Zhang Guihong, Director of the Center for Research on the United Nations and International Organizations of Fudan University, Distinguished Professor of the United Nations Peace University Source: World Knowledge WeChat Official Account)
