UN, Reform & multilateralism September 2024-

UN High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence
UNGA Resolution 377
Multilateralism needs an overhaul.
– Here’s where to start
Multilateralism

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

The Promise and Potential of the UN’s Summit of the Future
Negotiations have begun in earnest
Mark Leon Goldberg
(Global Dispatches) The United Nations is hosting a “Summit of the Future” in September during the annual opening the UN General Assembly. If all goes according to plan, world leaders will endorse a so-called “Pact for the Future” that will serve as a vehicle for enacting meaningful reforms to the United Nations.
The Summit of the Future is a big deal in UN circles — it is very much a force that is driving the agenda at the United Nations even as other crises may dominate the news cycle. Namibia and Germany are co-facilitating complex negotiations over what will be included in the pact.

79th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 79)
10–24 September 2024

Mark’s Personal UNGA 2024 Preview
Some stories I’ll be following during UN Week
Mark Leon Goldberg
(Global Dispatches) The Summit of the Future kicks off “High-Level Week” on September 21 and 22, with the expected adoption of three outcome documents intended to outline a new set of reforms aimed at making the UN more responsive to future global challenges. (More on those below the fold.) The Summit of the Future is the culmination of years of diplomacy and discussions focused on enhancing the UN’s ability to tackle current and future challenges. While the Summit of the Future hasn’t garnered much attention outside the UN bubble, within UN circles, it carries a level of significance that is hard to overstate.

2 September
Peacekeepers Need Peacemakers
What the UN and Its Members Owe the Blue Helmets
By Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Undersecretary-General for Peace Operations
(Foreign Affairs) …multiple studies have shown that peacekeeping missions are one of the most effective tools the UN Security Council has at its disposal to prevent the expansion of war, stop atrocities, and make it more likely that peace agreements endure.
Today, however, the challenges facing UN Peacekeeping are greater than ever. Currently, the United Nations has 11 peacekeeping missions deployed around the globe—missions that are making extraordinary contributions to containing violence amid a surge in conflict worldwide. In the Golan Heights and Cyprus, peacekeepers are monitoring and preserving cease-fires. In the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan, they are protecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable civilians. In the context of escalating exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the UN Peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon has worked to help avert escalations beyond those that have occurred throughout the ten-month conflict. Preserving cease-fires, protecting civilians, and containing violence are among the intermediate goals of peacekeeping, which also include mediating local conflicts and strengthening local institutions.
But the ultimate objectives of all peacekeeping operations are political. Such operations’ primary goal is to resolve conflicts by helping quarreling parties reach and implement the kind of agreements that help establish durable peace that outlasts the presence of peacekeepers. As the head of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts, however, I can attest that recent developments make it extremely challenging for UN Peacekeeping missions to accomplish these long-term goals. More and more, conflict is driven by armed groups that operate across national borders, weaponize cheap technologies such as improvised explosive devices, spew hate speech online, engage in terrorism and transnational organized crime, and often lack any political ambition beyond sparking disorder. Although the practice of peacekeeping must adapt to meet these daunting challenges, there is only so much peacekeeping can do on its own.