Original source: The Guardian

Seventy years on, the UN must reform its postwar structure and be better prepared to tackle today’s challenges of conflict, migration and climate change.

Seventy years after its birth, it is time to consider reform of the UN, which “has to be made to work” in a world where conflict is increasingly fragmented, crises protracted and the balance of geopolitical power is shifting, says Helen Clark, head of the UN Development Programme.

The former New Zealand prime minister, who was in London to brief politicians on last week’s financing for development summit in Ethiopia, says a new world order is also forcing change on other postwar multilateral bodies, particularly financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“You see the emerging economies starting to vote with their feet, with the Brics’ New Development Bank, the AIIB [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank], the Eurasian Development Bank … There are plenty of other sources of finance out there now,” she says.

“It is a bit of a crisis of the postwar settlement for multilateralism to adapt … it’s not so easy to invent an alternative to the UN. The UN has to be made to work,” says Clark, who has been tipped as a possible candidate for the post of secretary general when Ban Ki-moon steps down at the end of next year.

The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945. Today, its governing body, the security council, still reflects that postwar world with the conflict’s victors – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – still the only permanent members, all with veto powers.

Clark says that, nonetheless, developing countries still view the UN as an inclusive forum where their voices can be heard, at least in the general assembly. “But … we then come to the security council, which is still the postwar settlement, and the world doesn’t look like that any more. “The last serious effort [to reform the UN] was more than a decade ago, when I was New Zealand prime minister,” she says. “I think the 70th anniversary should concentrate minds.”

Some member states’ frustrations with the UN system were evident at the talks in Addis Ababa, where a financing framework was agreed for the post-2015 development agenda as defined in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), due to be adopted in New York in September.

The UN described the agreement as a “a series of bold measures to overhaul global finance practices and generate investments for tackling a range of economic, social and environmental challenges”.

However, some campaigners denounced the failure to agree on a new intergovernmental tax body to give developing nations a greater say in global tax affairs, the emphasis on private sector investment, and the absence of new financial commitments. The lack of a deal on tax also angered G77 developing countries.

“You see this frustration spilling out in the Addis Ababa acrimony because, clearly, not everyone is happy with the outcome,” says Clark. “The issue of tax, where countries are saying, ‘Decisions are being made without us, about us – what’s fair about that?’. Testing times, testing times.”

Clark thinks this “ill-feeling” might spill over into the final talks to cement the 17 SDGS, which will replace the millennium development goals and cover everything from ending poverty and hunger to eradicating inequality and promoting peace.

But she doesn’t see any major changes to the draft goals ahead of the September meeting, despite some outstanding issues such as whether to include the concept of common but differentiated responsibility regarding environmental degradation and development.

“I don’t think it’s a sort of quiet walk to September,” Clark says. “I think there’s going to be a lot of hard talking to do.”

According to Clark, the Addis agenda is an important policy framework that talks not only about financing but also outlines what the money should be spent on, such as the commitment to social protection systems and essential public services for all.

It also recognises the importance of risk-informed development, “whether it is the fallout from globalisation that puts the least developed country at risk when Wall Street sneezes, whether it’s the increasingly severe climate events … and then the risk of shock and disaster from war and conflict”.

The role of conflict in protracted emergencies – from Syria to Central African Republic to the migrants risking death to flee war – has underlined the inability of the global political system to come up with long-term solutions.

Reflecting on the UN’s ability to deal with this, Clark says the development tools to combat the causes of conflict are definitely there. “When the UN was founded, the peace and security part of its mandate was about stopping wars between nations, now that’s largely been successful. You don’t see too many wars between nations, but … we have plenty of wars going on, and they are internal and they often involve disparate, non-state actors, shifting alliances and forces, and an element of ideology of various kinds,” she says.

“[The UN] needs to develop the tools to be relevant to these situations, and the development tools are there, but are the political and security tools there? Is there the will in the security council to take on these issues?”

Clark says the UNDP takes a holistic view of this year’s defining development conferences – from a March summit in Sendai, Japan, on disaster risk reduction through the Addis Ababa finance meeting, the September SDG summit and critical talks on reaching a climate deal in Paris in December.

“They are all interrelated, and while these things tend to have their silos, in the end environmental finance is becoming one of the big strands of finance for developing countries,” she says, adding that she expects an agreement at the climate talks in Paris.

“It’s not going to be Copenhagen,” she says, referring to the failure to reach a binding accord at the 2009 summit. “There will be an agreement, but we don’t yet see the level of commitment in the intended nationally determined contributions to keep global warming under 2C.”

“That means that in the agreement it’s really critical to have that review … that keeps countries’ feet to the fire, to say: ‘You have to come back with more.’ We have to put in the benchmarks for people coming back with a level of commitment that might avert catastrophic and irreversible impacts of climate change above the 2C level.”