Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T13:10:37.599Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introductory Remarks by Ian Johnstone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2019

Ian Johnstone*
Affiliation:
former Dean ad interim, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Extract

In 1945, world leaders gathered in San Francisco to sign the United Nations Charter, which laid the blueprint for today's international system. The institutional architecture that was built around the United Nations, including its specialized agencies (such as the World Bank and World Health Organization) and funds and programs (such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)), survived the Cold War and seemed to have hit its stride in the immediate post-Cold War era. Yet the global distribution of power has changed, states are no longer the sole actors in international affairs, and the very idea of global governance is being called into question. Not surprisingly, there is much questioning of whether the institutional architecture that was built almost seventy-five years ago is still fit for purpose. Policymakers are rightly focused on reform of that architecture. Rather than tinkering at the margins, this panel was conceived with a more radical agenda. If the UN did not exist today, would we create it? If so, what would it look like?

Type
San Francisco 2.0: Constructing a Global Governance Architecture for the 21st Century
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by The American Society of International Law

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This panel was convened at 11:00 a.m., Thursday, March 28, 2019, by its moderator Ian Johnstone of Tufts University, who introduced the panelists: Lauren C. Baillie of the Public International & Policy Group; Lisa L. Bhansali of the World Bank; Brian Bieron of Ebay, Inc.; Mohamed Helal of OSU Moritz College of Law; and Tafadzwa Pasipanodya of Foley Hoag, LLP