International Institutions Must Empower The Individual
Srgjan Kerim Al-Hayat - 09/04/08//
Our globalized world with its rapidly-developing networks - of political alliances, corporations, economic power-centers, and non-governmental organizations - has outgrown the rigid parameters of existing institutional frameworks which tend to reflect past ideals of power politics. Viable solutions to the global problems we face today, such as climate change, terrorism and sustainable development, can no longer be captured through the concepts of state-centric power.
We need a new kind of internationalism that caters to a new global society based on principled pragmatism and shared responsibility. This is widely acknowledged and advocated by an expanding circle of world leaders, civil society activists, academics and people from all walks of life.
This new paradigm must not be built around another illusory 'world order' - the world is just to complex. What we need instead is a new culture of internationalism, a new way of thinking about our shared fate and our shared responsibilities.
It should be fluid and flexible enough to cope with our changing world, and should have the well-being of the individual at its centre. Through the United Nations system some important principles have been developed to put the necessary emphasis on the individual and to go beyond reified notions of the state and national sovereignty.
As the President of the United Nations General Assembly, I've been calling for a new culture of international relations based on a full respect for human rights, human security, responsibility to protect and sustainable development. These principles in turn encompass the basic values of freedom, solidarity, equality, respect, tolerance and shared responsibility.
This new culture must be allowed to flow freely through the web of international institutions. Globalization has tended to redistribute and devolve national sovereignty creating new global networks beyond national power - transferring aspects to regional unions of states as well as empowering the individual to exercise his or her sovereign free will. However, our present institutional structures are too rigidly anchored in an international system where preeminence is given to the state as the primary interlocutor and agent of change.
While Member States of the United Nations have adopted resolutions placing greater emphasis on individual human rights and security, these overarching principles have yet to be transformed into practical action as we see all too vividly in the case of Darfur.
We need a fundamental renewal and radical rethinking of what we expect from the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions as well as from other international and regional bodies. This is the real challenge for our immediate future.
Within the United Nations the most often heralded institutional reform relates to the Security Council even though this is but only one aspect of ongoing overall reforms that are necessary to transform the organization. As the chairman of the Task Force working on this issue, I'm convinced that if Security Council reform is only about adding or subtracting countries, rather than about modifying our approach to dealing with global challenges and international emergencies then we will become trapped in an outdated institutional framework.
Changing the composition of the Security Council must not be an end in itself, however necessary it is as a first step. A new culture of international relations must be part of the reform of the Security Council. The result must be a council based on an equilibrium of interests rather than a balance of power and whose members are ready to share responsibility, willing and able to act to protect human life - as the body of last resort - whatever and wherever the threat may be.
But a new culture of international relations is not just about transforming the way the power of the state is conceived, practiced and perceived. Conferring more power to the individual also demands that the people become more active partners.
As we look at world politics today we see that exercising power is still about attempts to create order by putting the many "national interests" ahead of the shared interests of all individuals. However, what is changing is the increase in opportunities for the individual to make a difference. The ever-growing number of NGOs and active members of civil societies that are playing a role in shaping the international agenda is an important part of the process. It shows that the empowerment of individuals through grass-roots activities is real in its impact and global in its scope. This is a hopeful sign.
A new culture of international relations would embed as its core principle that the responsibility of all states, international institutions as well civil societies and NGOs is to work together in solidarity in order to provide every individual with equality of access to rights and opportunities.
Our moral and institutional obligation is to reshape international organizations to facilitate these opportunities. But as individuals it is also very much up to us all to grasp those opportunities and make them a reality. Creating a framework for self-empowerment is precisely what should be at the heart of a new culture of international relations.
The institutions we've inherited need to be infused with new visions to ensure that the global architecture is fit for the 21st century and beyond.
Srgjan Kerim is the President of the 62nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
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