| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Three decades ago John Holmes argued that the need for having the kind
of "international organizations in which to tackle the inescapably complex
economic and social issues in an interdependent world need not be
restated." Despite these words, ten years later, when Donald Puchala and I presented
the first "State of the United Nations Report" to the second annual meeting
of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), we found
an organizational system teetering and tottering on the verge of crisis.1 There
was a void of leadership, as well as a crisis of capacity precipitated largely by
the refusal of the United States to fulfill its legal obligation to fund UN agencies;
and staff morale was at a historic low. One of the main themes that we explored
in that report was the challenge to the UN system-as intergovernmental institutions-
of dealing with the plethora of global problems that confront the world
and dominate the global agenda and that cannot be solved by governmental or
intergovernmental means alone. Now, after twenty more years, the illusive quest
continues for new avenues and directions for making global governance more
effective for promoting sustainable human security and development.
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