An Innovation Agenda for UN 75 : The Albright-Gambari Commission and the Road to 2020

With the proliferation of advanced military and information technologies, growing ease of movement, increasing climate instability, and the rise of violent extremism, conflict and state fragility have increased since reaching a twenty-year low in 2010. In 2017, the latest year with complete data, nearly ninety-two thousand individuals lost their lives in various forms of violent conflict.Countries also face many cross-border economic threats and challenges—including weaknesses in cyberspace infrastructure, loss of tax revenues to illicit financial flows, illegal exploitation of natural resources, and other corrupt practices—that inhibit the growth of economies and the ability of governments to enhance economic resilience, especially in the Global South. Even more alarming, if humankind cannot find its way to limit average global warming to less than 1.5°C (looming as soon as 2030), further severe climatic changes are anticipated, including intensified biodiversity loss, storm surges, drought, desertification, and sea level rise of up to one meter by 2100.In the face of these global challenges, “we the peoples” are currently a house divided. In addition to “the West versus the rest” or “Global North versus Global South,” there are numerous divisions and discrepancies within and across societies along racial, gender, socioeconomic, and other lines. And as the discourse of recent years has shown, perceived injustices are at least as divisive as measurable discrepancies. The feeling of not benefitting (enough) from globalization is coupled with a desire to redefine national identities as incompatible with global citizenship and attempts to close states off from the outside world by putting up walls and fences, denouncing international agreements, and leaving common institutions.The roots of current discontents with global governance lie in the actual and perceived lack of justice and human security for many individuals in a globalized world. The current crisis of global governance undermines international support mechanisms intended to build resilience, reduce corruption, combat extremism, and ensure regional stability in global trouble spots.Therefore, global action by governments, international organizations, and global civil society— underpinned by a new global ethic—to reverse these dangerous trends has become the moral and practical imperative of the present era. Since the launch, in 2015, of the Report of the Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, Confronting the Crisis of Global Governance, a concerted effort has been made to promote urgently needed global governance innovations, looking toward and continuing through the United Nations’ seventy-fifth anniversary in 2020.After much hard work by many parties, in June 2019 the UN General Assembly (A/RES/73/299) set into motion multilateral and multi-stakeholder negotiations on a “concise, substantive, forward-looking and unifying declaration that captures Member States’ collective commitment to multilateralism and to the United Nations and their shared vision for a common future” for consideration at a Heads of State Summit that is to gather in New York in September 2020, just one month before the seventy-fifth anniversary of the UN’s founding (“UN 75”). Detailed in this study, we offer an updated Twenty Global Ideas for 2020, based on the Albright- Gambari Commission’s original analysis, broader reform recommendations, and worldwide consultations.