“The 70th anniversary of the UN Charter: Issues, Challenges and Perspectives facing a sustainable Post-2015 Development Agenda” by the Geneva International Model United Nations (GIMUN)

President Zwygart,
Dear students and friends:

Welcome to the Palais des Nations, just one day before we open the doors of this historic building to greet everybody who would like to celebrate the UN’s 70th anniversary with us. I am glad we can have this pre-birthday discussion on issues, challenges and opportunities for the United Nations in the years to come. As we celebrate the 70th anniversary this year, we need to reflect on what we have achieved so far, but also look at the challenges ahead of us.

I am proud of the UN’s achievements and its impact worldwide since its inception in 1945. The UN works in many areas to assist States in implementing the objectives laid out in the Charter of the United Nations – strengthen peace and security; solve international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character; promote and encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.

You may tell me that the perception and image of the UN is not at its best at the moment. I think you will be right to say so. The general public sees only the tip of the iceberg. Through the media it sees the headlines about our incapacity to act decisively on politically dividing issues: The inability of the Security Council to stop the armed conflict in Syria, not acting fast enough to address the Ebola crisis, inefficiency in tackling environmental issues, and a slow response to the plight of refugees are some of the examples of such headlines. What people do not see is the actual size of the iceberg and what the UN does beyond the surface of media headlines. Providing food to over 90 million people, fighting AIDS, assisting disaster victims, promoting human rights, striving to secure education for all, ending violence against women, vaccinating children, reducing maternal and child mortality, protecting intellectual property, making roads safer. These are just a few examples of what we do at the UN. This every day work of the UN staff is not making headlines, although it makes a difference to the state of the world and to the people in need. Globally, statistics demonstrate that humanity as a whole has never lived longer, never been so healthy and has never been better educated. These are our joint achievements to which the UN has been contributing decisively for the last 70 years.

Seventy is an age of maturity. Our organization has accumulated a lot of experiences and lessons learnt. It tested different assumptions and tried various methods. The next decade will be very important for the world and for the United Nations. Different policy frameworks have been or are being negotiated this year, which will pave the future of the international system. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction have been adopted. Soon we will have the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. These frameworks are interlinked, and they have to converge in the implementation phase to become the frame of our future action. Upcoming big international conferences will further polish this frame: the UN General Assembly meeting on Drugs in April 2016 and the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted a couple of weeks ago, is the pivotal element of this future frame. It is a historic achievement, which was preceded by over three years of intensive preparations, consultations with a broad range of stakeholders and negotiations. It is an ambitious and interlinked agenda with the potential to bring transformational change.

The 17 SDGs and 169 targets demonstrate the scale and the ambition of this new universal Agenda. It offers the world a fresh opportunity to eliminate poverty, exclusion and to combat inequality. Never before has there been a pledge from world leaders for common action and endeavour across such a broad and universal policy agenda. It is a roadmap for all of us.

The success of this Agenda will depend on its implementation and on the mobilization of a broad array of actors. The collective effort and engagement of all actors at all levels will be required. The United Nations has the task of supporting Member States in this undertaking. United Nations institutions will need to work very closely together and at the same time help Member States to implement these SDGs. We have to work across organizational silos in a more integrated way than we have done before, at all levels.

The SDGs acknowledge the interconnectedness of today’s challenges. To achieve them we have to find new ways of doing business. Business as usual is no longer an option. The same goes for the work at national level. Most national systems are organized into line ministries which do not coordinate enough between each other. The international system mirrors this approach. Cross-cutting solutions require different ways of functioning. We have to adjust national, regional and international structures of cooperation to the new complex challenges. Member States will not be the only decisive actors in the future; there will be a multitude of other stakeholders. Given the new interconnectedness we need a new generation of multiple partnerships that allow us to move away from superficial consultation with non-state actors. The Westphalien model will have to be complemented by non-State actors, including NGOs, the private sector, academia, thinks tanks who will need to be at the decision making table along with the rest of us.

We will have to be much more holistic and inclusive in the future, taking into account the complexity of situations. We have to do better in managing our environmental resources. We should not let the opportunity pass to conclude a global agreement on climate change to keep the consequences of global warming limited. We need long-term strategies. Focused on short-sighted financial aspects, Governments all too often opt for solutions with short-term gains overlooking very high long-term costs.

International Geneva has an important role to play in this endeavour. Geneva is the operational hub of the UN system. Nowhere else on this planet you have such a wide array of actors working on various issues I spoke about. We have a particular capacity and knowledge. It is our collective responsibility that we deliver in the best possible way. A majority of agencies that will be working on implementing the SDGs are based in Geneva.

The Perception Change Project, which I initiated over a year ago to showcase the relevance and impact of the work of the UN on everybody’s life worldwide, illustrated the role of Geneva actors in the implementation of the SDGs very well. We have done a mapping of the organizations who will contribute to the realization of each of the 17 SDGs through a web-based survey. The massive amount of information received from some 70 entities, was turned into a series of simple infographics that showed our collective expertise goal by goal. This proved to be a useful exercise, and we are now working on the second version that will allow organizations, that did not respond to our first call, to join. This tool ultimately aims to provide a comprehensive overview for Member States and the public as they embark on concerted efforts to meet the goals.

Without today’s technology it would have taken us much, much longer to finalize the exercise I have just described.
Technology changes our life, our way of working and doing things. Internet, for example, provides important tools for participatory and inclusive governance. But cyber wars have brought important institutions to their knees bypassing conventional defence mechanisms. Social media have served as platforms to spread hate and division. Technology is serving us well, but also has some negative sides. With 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions, more individuals have easy access to information. How will these newly empowered voices be taken into account by decision makers? What will be the consequences if they are ignored?

We have seen how technology was used to solicit in an unprecedented inclusive way contributions from affected populations during the elaboration of the Sustainable Development Goals. Children and youth constituted one of the nine major groups of civil society, which made important contributions to the development of the Agenda for Sustainable Development. Through the Global Youth Call, 1.3 million young people who voted in the MyWorld2015 survey told us that their priorities were Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship, Health, Good Governance, and Peace and Stability. They also told us about the importance of youth-led and youth-friendly monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in the design, planning and implementation of national policies and programmes. You and the youth in general will also have to be engaged in the implementation of the SDGs.

We will certainly also use new technologies, tools and policies to face the increasing urbanization challenges. By 2050, 75% of the world population will be living in cities. While urbanization can bring new economic opportunities, cities can also be sites of heightened interpersonal and collective violence. The likelihood of deterioration of peaceful societies as a consequence of urbanisation will be greater in countries with weak rule of law, high levels of inequality and therefore high levels of intergroup grievances. This will require a serious rethinking of how we collectively conduct the business of peace.

In the search for new responses to these and other global challenges, prevention has to become the first priority. There is strong lip service support for early warning and conflict prevention, but this has to be translated into political support and early action. It is proven that the Security Council’s early engagement and unity can achieve significant results in terms of prevention, but this is still very much an exception to the rule when it does happen.

Climate change and further deterioration of the environment, as well as poverty and inequality will be major drivers of conflicts if not addressed urgently and adequately.

Another challenge is the trust deficit we are currently experiencing at national and international levels. Rules are breached with impunity. That engenders a deep feeling of injustice and inequity. It needs to be addressed urgently.

To conclude, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals contains all the elements necessary to address the current and future challenges. Though we have the ingredients, it won’t be easy with 193 cooks representing the Member States and several hundred other cooks representing international organizations and non-state actors. This is the situation where a good Chef de Cuisine can make the difference. I am convinced that a transformed, transversally working UN will successfully manage this coordination role as the Chef de Cuisine to implement the SDGs. If we manage to implement the 17 SDGs, we will be much closer to a more peaceful, prosperous, sustainable and just world.

Your generation will have to be a driving force behind the implementation of those goals. Your role and contributions will be vital to their success. You need to help us translate your energy, enthusiasm and research findings into strategies that work in practice. We need you to come up with innovative ideas and out of the box strategies. I hope we can count on your support and engagement in our joint mission to ensure the success of the post-2015 endeavour. I encourage you all to think about making a difference.

Finally, I invite you all to come to the Palais des Nations tomorrow for the Open Day to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. Among many activities at the Palais, there will be the inauguration of a sculpture of Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, which is called “Rebirth”. It symbolizes a new path and a new start, and embodies the purpose and mission of the UN and the rebirth of society. Come tomorrow, it is going to be fun.

Thank you.