全球治理失败:秘书长的警告
https://globalgovernanceforum.org/global-governance-failures-warnings-by-the-secretary-general/
作者:阿瑟·里昂·达尔 2023 年 2 月 21 日
如果有人对全球治理的失败有清晰的认识,那应该是联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯,他最近以令人惊讶的不外交语言对这些失败提出了最严厉的批评。 在 2023 年 2 月 6 日向大会通报 2023 年优先事项时,他警告说,“我们一生中从未遇到过前所未有的挑战。 战争仍在继续。 气候危机仍在继续。 极端富裕和极端贫困肆虐。 富人和穷人之间的鸿沟正在分裂社会、国家和我们更广阔的世界。 巨大的地缘政治分歧正在破坏全球团结和信任。 这条路是死胡同。”
七大治理失败
虽然我们知道该做什么,而且不采取行动的代价远远超过采取行动,但我们却陷入了短期思维,他将这种思维描述为极其不负责任和不道德的行为。 他呼吁通过以人权为基础的深入、系统的行动来实现变革。 这对我们的全球治理项目意味着什么? 除了制度层面之外,我们还需要像他一样强调行动伦理。 他列出了七项相关人权,总结如下。
面对战争,我们必须从和平权入手,按照和平新议程提出的预防冲突的权利。 面对贫困和饥饿,我们需要社会和经济发展的权利。 他表示,我们的经济和金融体系存在根本性问题,需要对全球金融架构进行根本性转变,并优先考虑发展中国家。 为了挽救可持续发展目标,9 月份的可持续发展目标峰会将成为 2023 年的核心时刻,为新社会契约奠定基础。
我们必须结束对自然的无情、无情和毫无意义的战争
对自然的战争
作为一名环境科学家,秘书长在表达他的第三个优先事项是我们享有清洁、健康、可持续环境的权利时所使用的语言给我留下了特别深刻的印象。 “我们必须结束对自然的无情、无情和毫无意义的战争。” 我们正朝着致命的 2.8 度气候变化迈进,生物多样性遭到残酷且不可逆转的丧失,海洋被污染堵塞,吸血鬼般的过度消耗水耗尽了地球的命脉,需要破坏才能结束破坏。 我们需要气候正义来取代化石燃料行业的无底贪婪。 当化石燃料生产商的核心产品是我们的核心问题时,他们不应该继续经营,各国应该停止补贴化石燃料。 秘书长选择的语言更多是激进分子在街头示威的语言,而不是外交官在会议室的语言,但是当面对即将到来的灾难之前政府的惰性和无所作为时,还有什么可能引起人们的注意呢? 他呼吁在 9 月召开气候团结公约和气候雄心峰会,并得出结论:“气候行动是 21 世纪推动所有可持续发展目标的最佳机会。”
全球变暖的后果之一是海平面上升,这是由于水的热膨胀和陆地上的冰融化造成的。 在 2023 年 2 月 14 日向联合国安理会通报情况时,秘书长警告说,这正在制造新的不稳定和冲突根源,并加剧威胁,导致低洼社区和整个国家消失,9 亿人面临风险。 任何一个头脑正常的人怎么能忽视这种无法避免的危险呢?
社会自残
继续向大会通报情况,秘书长的第四个优先事项是尊重文化权利的多样性和普遍性,因为文化是人类的心脏和灵魂,赋予我们的生活意义。 虽然普遍性和多样性对于文化权利至关重要,但它们却受到来自各方的攻击,种族和宗教少数群体、难民、移民、土著人民和其他人越来越成为仇恨的目标。 错误和虚假信息正在影响包括气候危机在内的全球问题的进展。 第五个权利是充分的性别平等,一半的人类因我们这个时代最普遍的侵犯人权行为而受到阻碍,而且情况变得更糟。 性别平等是一个权力问题,而拥有数千年权力的父权制正在重新确立自己的地位。
第六,公民权利和政治权利是包容性社会的基础,但随着民主的倒退、媒体成为前线和公民社会的空间消失,这些权利受到威胁。 最后,他提出了子孙后代的权利,这些权利将在明年的未来峰会上讨论,旨在与自然和平相处; 确保所有人拥有一个开放、自由、包容的数字未来; 消除M的武器
屁股破坏; 并建立更加公正和包容的治理。 他创建了联合国青年办公室,并打算加强全球行动,建设一个适应新时代的联合国——更加富有创造力、更加多元化、多语言、更加贴近其所服务的人民。
虽然秘书长指出《联合国宪章》和《世界人权宣言》是走出当今死胡同的出路,但我们知道,该体系存在缺陷,阻碍了这些崇高理想的实现。 特别是,社会上的破坏性力量紧紧抓住国家主权,以此作为抵御其自私行为的壁垒。 在全球统一体系内用丰富的国家自主权取代这种过时的范式是向前迈出的重要一步。 我们面临的挑战是根据秘书长的诊断提出更好的全球治理建议,以修复这个破碎的体系。 鉴于所有这些问题及其相互关系的紧迫性,我们刻不容缓。
Global Governance Failures: Warnings by the Secretary-General
https://globalgovernanceforum.org/global-governance-failures-warnings-by-the-secretary-general/
BY ARTHUR LYON DAHL FEB 21, 2023
If anyone should have a clear view of global governance failures, it should be UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and he has recently provided the most damning critique of those failures in surprisingly undiplomatic language. In his 6 February 2023 briefing to the General Assembly on priorities for 2023, he warns about “a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes. Wars grind on. The climate crisis burns on. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on. The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world. Epic geopolitical divisions are undermining global solidarity and trust. This path is a dead end.”
While we know what to do, and that the cost of inaction far exceeds that of action, we are trapped in short-term thinking which he describes as deeply irresponsible and immoral. He calls for transformation through action in deep and systemic ways founded in human rights. What does this mean for our projects for global governance? Beyond the institutional dimensions, we need to emphasize, as he does, the ethics of action. He lays out seven of the human rights concerned, summarized as follows.
Faced with wars, we must start with the right to peace, preventing conflict as proposed in his New Agenda for Peace. Faced with poverty and hunger, we require rights to social and economic development. He says there is something fundamentally wrong with our economic and financial system, requiring a radical transformation in our global financial architecture with priority to developing countries. To rescue the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDG Summit in September will be the centrepiece moment of 2023, providing the foundations for a New Social Contract.
We must end the merciless, relentless and senseless war on nature
As an environmental scientist, I was particularly struck by the language the Secretary-General used when he expressed his third priority as our right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment. “We must end the merciless, relentless and senseless war on nature.” We are hurtling towards a deadly 2.8 degrees of climate change, a brutal, irreversible loss of biodiversity, an ocean choked with pollution, vampiric overconsumption of water draining the lifeblood of the planet, requiring disruption to end the destruction. We need climate justice to replace the bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuel producers should not be in business when their core product is our core problem, and countries should stop subsidizing fossil fuels. The language the SG has chosen is more that of radicals demonstrating in the street rather than diplomats in a conference room, but what else might catch attention when faced with government inertia and inaction before impending catastrophe? He calls for a Climate Solidarity Pact and a Climate Ambition Summit in September, and concludes that “climate action is the 21st century’s greatest opportunity to drive forward all the Sustainable Development Goals.”
One of the consequences of global heating is sea level rise, both from thermal expansion of water and melting ice on land. In a briefing to the UN Security Council on 14 February 2023, the Secretary-General warned that this was creating new sources of instability and conflict, and a threat multiplier, with low-lying communities and entire countries disappearing and 900 million people at risk. How can anyone of right mind ignore such dangers that can no longer be avoided?
Continuing with his briefing to the General Assembly, the SG’s fourth priority is respect for diversity and the universality of cultural rights, since culture is humanity’s heart and soul and gives our lives meaning. While universality and diversity are critical to cultural rights, they are under attack from all sides, with ethnic and religious minorities, refugees, migrants, indigenous people and others increasingly targeted for hate. Mis- and disinformation are impacting progress on global issues, including the climate crisis. The fifth right is to full gender equality, with half of humanity held back by the most widespread human rights abuse of our time, and things getting worse. Gender equality is a question of power, and the patriarchy, with millennia of power behind it, is reasserting itself.
Sixth is civil and political rights as the basis of inclusive societies, but these rights are under threat as democracy is in retreat, with media in the firing line and the space for civil society vanishing. Finally, he raises the rights of future generations, to be addressed at next year’s Summit of the Future with the aim of making peace with nature; ensuring an open, free, inclusive digital future for all; eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction; and building more just and inclusive governance. He has created a UN Youth Office, and intends to bolster global action and build a United Nations fit for a new era – ever more creative, diverse, multilingual and closer to the people it serves.
While the Secretary-General points to the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the way out of today’s dead end, we know that there are flaws in the system that have prevented reaching these high ideals. In particular, the destructive forces in society are clinging to national sovereignty as their rampart against interference with their selfish ways. Replacing this out-of-date paradigm with rich national autonomy within a globally unified system is an essential step forward. Our challenge is to come up with proposals for better global governance to fix this broken system in response to the diagnosis of the Secretary-General. Given the urgency of all these issues and their interrelationships, we have no time to lose.