New global governance in action in Geneva

As Geneva was mentioned in the G8 Summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, as the venue of a possible conference on Syria, it is time to look more closely at how the dynamic multilateral environment in this small Swiss city is breaking international trends and leading the world towards a new form of global governance.

Criticism of global governance is in vogue. The mechanisms that the international community has relied on seem increasingly unfit to address effectively the challenges we face.

The critics often seem to have a point: the economic and financial climate remains volatile. Despite years of negotiation and mounting scientific evidence on the effects of human behaviour on our climate, we have no legally-binding agreement to curb carbon emissions. The Doha Round of trade negotiations that was to bring a more level playing field for developed and developing countries is stalled. The Conference on Disarmament, the world’s pre-eminent disarmament negotiation body, has for the past 16 years failed to agree on even a programme of work. The list goes on. Whether in security, environment or the economy, we appear to be lacking both a clear direction and adequate tools.

But this misses important points about the transformation of global governance and how it is being practiced. Nowhere is this more evident than in Geneva, which now represents one of the world’s most vibrant governance.

More than 170 Member States of the United Nations have Permanent Missions in Geneva and new ones are added on a regular basis. The United Nations system has some 10,000 staff in Geneva in over 35 different entities, working together with a multitude of other international organizations and alongside 400 non-governmental organizations, a dynamic private sector and cutting-edge academic institutions.

Low-key discrete negotiations on some of the world’s most complex crisis take place here, making Geneva one of the key centres for preventive diplomacy in the world.

As the seat of the Human Rights Council, which has grown in influence, human rights are promoted globally. Through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other partners, human suffering is alleviated. Security, stability and development are facilitated through a web of disarmament conventions. With the World Health Organization in the lead, global public health is improved.

Geneva is respected as a unique hub for practical collaboration on employment, intellectual property, trade, development, information and communication technologies, as well as meteorology. It is not the sort of governance that grabs headlines, but it is the sort that really changes lives.

However, there are important lessons to draw from the Geneva experience.

First, we need to work across institutional and thematic lines. It is almost a truism that the challenges we face cannot be addressed by one country or institution alone. But in reality, we are far from breaking down the silos. In Geneva, networking of actors on cross-cutting themes such as peacebuilding has been particularly successful in generating new ways of thinking and new collaboration on long-standing problems. The long-expected construction of the Maison de la Paix, which will house many of the intellectual capacities in Geneva, is to strengthen the potential for such innovative thinking.

Second, we must build more meaningful partnerships with civil society in the broadest sense. Advocacy and awareness-raising by non-governmental organizations is indispensable. But we need to integrate the academic and research communities, not least the scientific institutions, to a greater extent, and also the private sector. For example, we cannot expect to find real answers to climate change if we do not connect to scientific knowledge. The IPCC, with its Geneva-based secretariat, brings together hundreds of scientists for just this purpose. Similarly, we cannot expect to expand employment opportunities without the involvement of the private sector that generates the jobs we need. In the International Labour Organization in Geneva, workers and employers have an equal voice with Governments in the effort to create jobs for the world’s 200 million unemployed.

Third, we need to embrace different types of governance models for different issues. No one size fits all. The large-scale multilateral negotiations, driven and shaped by Governments, still have value. There will be contexts and issues where they are the only way of doing business. But they are no longer the only way of doing business. This is not a threat to our system of sovereign States; it is a complement. The sooner we get rid of the notion that different models compete, the sooner we can capitalize on the richness of the various governance options we have.

On the shores of Lake Geneva, institutions and individuals have learned to work together by freeing themselves of rigid moulds and reaching across disciplines. If we are prepared to take onboard these lessons, we can scale up efforts to tackle pressing international challenges.