otrdiena, 2019. gada 5. marts

A Proposal to Enhance the Legal Capacities and Boost the Efficiency of the UN



                                                          Mora trahit periculum


A Proposal  
to Enhance the Legal Capacities and Boost the Efficiency of the UN

Pondering over the actual situation, studying the origin and course of the processes around and analyzing political decision-making procedures, their argumentation and consequences, we come to the conclusion that the greatest threat to the future of Civilization lies in the politicians themselves. And, first and foremost, in the socially responsible or locally pragmatic actions of policy-makers and state leaders, which are dictated by cynically egoistic, radically national & ideological motives.
          Looking from this point of view, real threats arise not because of the rapid penetration of the achievements of the fourth industrial revolution into our lives, but because of the irresponsible application of new technology and the unwise use of scientific discoveries and inventions.
          This means that the real danger for the future prospects of Humankind comes from the people who have usurped the rights and got the privilege to act arbitrarily and use the achievements of modern science and technology in the interests of strengthening their personal power.... Read more: https://www.amazon.com/HOW-GET-RID-SHACKLES-TOTALITARIANISM-ebook/dp/B0C9543B4L/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19WW1TG75ZU79&keywords=HOW+TO+GET+RID+OF+THE+SHACKLES+OF+TOTALITARIANISM&qid=1687700500&s=books&sprefix=how+to+get+rid+of+the+shackles+of+totalitarianism%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C181&sr=1-1
          

It’s Time to Reform the UN


The United Nations' failure to coordinate effectively during the COVID-19 crisis will bring about a difficult period of reckoning and tough decisions for the organization. Above all, the UN will have to abandon its old mindset and adopt institutional reforms that make it better equipped to address twenty-first-century challenges.

DOHA – The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many institutional weaknesses, but above all, it has shown that the United Nations is in urgent need of reform. In particular, the response of the World Health Organization – the UN’s global health agency – to the virus has revealed obvious shortcomings, which reflect a lack of international consensus and cooperation, as well as widespread protectionism on the part of its stakeholders.
Nowhere has criticism of the WHO been louder or more pronounced than in the United States, where President Donald Trump’s recent decision to freeze US funding for the organization delivered a devastating blow at a time when it was desperately in need of support. What the UN does next, and how it recovers from its failure to coordinate effectively during the COVID-19 crisis, will determine its role in the post-pandemic world.
I consider myself a son of the UN and a staunch supporter of its values and principles. Over a period of more than four decades, I undertook various roles within its mammoth bureaucracy, starting in 1974 with my appointment as Qatar’s delegate to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and ending in 2017, when I failed by a single vote to become UNESCO Director-General.
For much of this time, the UN consistently provided hope for a better future. Its specialized agencies and organizations played a vital role in preserving world peace, preventing international conflicts, eliminating colonialism, and protecting human rights.
More recently, however, the UN’s role has been steadily declining, and its influence on world events and governments has waned. Once the world’s pre-eminent moderator and arbitrator, it has become too constrained by old concepts and doctrines to be the truly effective, collaborative global governing body that its founders envisioned. It can no longer instill respect among governments for international legitimacy, international law, and the maintenance of global peace and security, as it did after both World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example.
Put simply, the world has changed and the UN has failed to keep up. The twenty-first century’s turbo-charged political, economic, and cultural fluidity has left the once-powerful organization exposed, with few friends left to defend it.
But this decline does not mean that the UN is destined for history’s scrap heap. If the past is any guide, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic – a catastrophic failure of global politics – is likely to usher in a period of significant change throughout the world. I believe we are heading toward a new and more diverse global order, in which international governance is no longer driven by any one country or set of political values.
During the COVID-19 crisis, international solidarity has failed, as each country has sought to protect its own interests. When the world eventually emerges from the pandemic, there will be inquests, finger pointing, and even scapegoating. The UN will need to weather this storm, but I think that, in the end, it will be helped by a renewed appreciation for the collective community that we previously worked so hard to build.
Still, this period of reckoning will be difficult for the UN, because tough decisions will need to be made. The organization will need to abandon its old mindset and move in directions that it may find uncomfortable.
For example, bodies such as UNESCO will need to demonstrate their contribution to the world more clearly. Because education, science, and culture will be critical to the post-pandemic recovery, UNESCO’s leaders must ask themselves probing questions: What are we doing to preserve cultural values? How can we protect human rights, including the right to education? How can we lead the scientific community and prevent another pandemic? Should there be more regional diversification to ensure it serves all member states, and does the leadership reflect this? Only by addressing such challenges successfully will UNESCO and other UN agencies remain relevant in a post-COVID-19 world.
Reform of the UN should start at the top with the Security Council, whose five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the US – continue to exert veto-wielding power commensurate with a bygone age. Expanding the Council’s permanent membership to include other countries – from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East – would deliver a more equitable balance to global decision-making.
And such change is justified. For example, India is set to become the world’s most populous country during this decade, Japan has the world’s third-largest economy, and South Africa and Nigeria have by far the largest economies in the continent with the fastest-growing population.
Equally, UN agencies need to ensure that citizens of the country in which they are based do not fill their top positions. Too often, an organization’s choice of leadership calls its legitimacy and independence into question. We need look no further than my own region – the Middle East – to see the harmful effects that such decisions can have.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/united-nations-covid19-response-shows-need-for-reform-by-hamad-bin-abdulaziz-al-kawari-2020-05

Human Development Index 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights


International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) of 16 December 1966
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx

Slow Death or New Direction for the UN?

 by Mark Malloch ...

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/un-future-prospects-under-new-cold-war-by-mark-malloch-brown-2020-11


GLOBAL PEACE INDEX MEASURING PEACE IN A COMPLEX WORLD GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2019

Quantifying Peace and its Benefits GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2019 |
The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human wellbeing and progress. IEP achieves its goals by developing new conceptual frameworks to define peacefulness; providing metrics for measuring peace and uncovering the relationships between business, peace and prosperity, as well as promoting a better understanding of the cultural, economic and political factors that create peace. IEP is headquartered in Sydney, with offices in New York, The Hague, Mexico City, Brussels and Harare. It works with a wide range of partners internationally and collaborates with intergovernmental organisations on measuring and communicating the economic value of peace. For more information visit www.economicsandpeace.org Please cite this report as: Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2019: Measuring Peace in a Complex World, Sydney, June 2019. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/reports (accessed Date Month Year).
 1 Contents
Key Findings 4
Highlights 6
2019 Global Peace Index Rankings 8
Regional Overview 13
Improvements & Deteriorations 20
GPI Trends 26
 Peace Perceptions 32
Climate Change and Peace 43
Results 58
 Methodoogy at a glance 63
 What is Positive Peace? 66
 Positive Peace and Negative Peace 71
Positive Peace and the Economy 76
Appendix A: GPI Methodology 84 Appendix B: GPI indicator sources, definitions & scoring criteria 88 Appendix C: GPI Domain Scores 96 Appendix D: Economic Cost of Violence




The Sustainable Development Agenda UN

17 Goals for People, for Planet

The Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. The 17 Goals were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which set out a 15-year plan to achieve the Goals.
Today, progress is being made in many places, but, overall, action to meet the Goals is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required. 2020 needs to usher in a decade of ambitious action to deliver the Goals by 2030….:

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

by Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson

What forces lead to democracy's creation? Why does it sometimes consolidate only to collapse at other times? Written by two of the foremost authorities on this subject in the world, this volume develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. It revolutionizes scholarship on the factors underlying government and popular movements toward democracy or dictatorship. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Their book, the subject of a four-day seminar at Harvard's Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, was also the basis for the Walras-Bowley lecture at the joint meetings of the European Economic Association and Econometric Society in 2003 and is the winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association as the best economist working in the United States under age 40. He is the author of the forthcoming text Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. James A. Robinson is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is a Harvard Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth. He is coeditor with Jared Diamond of the forthcoming book Natural Experiments in History.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231791256_Economic_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democracy

 

These are the new rules of capitalism

What does the future of capitalism look like? Here’s what members of the Fast Company Impact Council had to say back in June.

The Fast Company Impact Council, an invitation-only group of corporate leaders, entrepreneurial founders, and other leaders from across industries, gathered on June 30 to share their insights. Members split into small groups, moderated by Fast Company editors, and shared their perspectives on how they are managing and innovating amid a trio of crises: the global pandemic, the economic slowdown, and calls for social justice in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

In this roundtable discussion, led by deputy editor David Lidsky, top executives discussed the new rules of capitalism and how stakeholders can make it work for everyone. In alphabetical order, the participants in this session were Will Ahmed, CEO of Whoop; Barie Carmichael, Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School; Frank Cooper, CMO of BlackRock; Patrick Criteser, president and CEO of Tillamook County Creamery Association; Laura González-Estéfani, founder, CEO, and partner at The Venture City; Andrew King, managing partner at Bastille; Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide; Stuart Landesberg, CEO and cofounder of Grove Collaborative; and Oliver Libby, managing partner at Hatzimemos/Libby.

Excerpts of the roundtable have been edited for length and clarity.

Stuart Landesberg: I believe that business is the biggest agent for change in our society, and I believe it to be the core organizing principle of humans outside of the nuclear family over the last several hundred years. And certainly the organizing principle that drives the most change in our societal infrastructure. Over the last several hundred years, the desire for monetary gain has outweighed the desire for the things that are good for people and the planet—in the decision tree of the best and brightest people in the world. So I am optimistic, because I’ve seen, in my own experience, that companies focused on mission, purpose, sustainability [because] being good stewards of the world and leaving the place a little better than we found it is a sustainable competitive advantage. It’s an advantage in hiring. It’s an advantage in partnership. It’s an advantage in brand. It’s an advantage in a lot of ways.

Frank Cooper: I spent most of my career outside of financial services. I’ve been in entertainment and technology. I’ve been in packaged goods through PepsiCo. I’ve been at BuzzFeed, Motown, and Def Jam. The one common thread that I’ve had through all those experiences was this idea of purpose. I’ve carried that with me from the very beginning. Here at BlackRock, we feel like we’re one of the critical players in trying to help to advance this idea that purpose-driven capitalism and purpose-driven companies are, in fact, the future. I think purpose is one of the most important topics to cover, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood topics. It’s often seen as an abstract idea and a massive departure from capitalism, which I don’t think it is at all.

Barie Carmichael: The executives and leaders I’ve watched who have been able to break through [and build an inclusive corporate culture] are the ones who have learned to cultivate dissension [and] something that I call being a constructive skeptic, to begin to really break through and understand their “social footprint.” Just as every company has a carbon footprint, it also has a social footprint. The question is, Does it really know what that social footprint is that’s embedded in the way it does business? This is not something that can be cured by philanthropy or writing a check. It has to be cured by that breaking through the blind spot to get at what it takes to make the change happen.

Margery Kraus: We keep talking about diversity, [but] part of the issue is that diversity is a number, and we can all, in some ways, have control over that. Inclusion is a totally different thing. And inclusion is really where we need to pay more attention—inclusion and equity. People spend a lot of time bringing in diverse candidates, and if the culture is not accepting of diversity, then you’re never going to have the benefit of diversity. The benefit of diversity is that you learn things from sitting in a room with people who are different than you are, and your clients get benefit from that.

Will Ahmed: The focus on unlocking human performances is one that drives a lot of our decision-making, and [that means] anchoring a lot of what we do in research. Doing research on health is really important, independent from whether or not it helps build our business. Putting a big focus on research has helped us maintain our mission and purpose. So when we saw COVID-19 was becoming this this global pandemic, we added COVID-19 tracking in our app. This was in early March—I think we were one of the first consumer products to have COVID-19 tracking in an app. Within about two weeks, we had over 1,000 responses of people who tested positive for COVID-19. We were then able to partner with Cleveland Clinic and CQUniversity, two leading research institutions. And we were able to collect a lot of data on what does COVID-19 look like alongside Whoop data. It effectively showed that having a super elevated respiratory rate could be a predictor to COVID-19. Now if we weren’t grounded in research, I don’t think we would have taken all those steps . . . and a result of publishing that research, it appears to be good for our business, too.

Laura González-Estéfani: I kind of don’t trust a lot of these companies with these amazing statements [about their commitment to diversity and inclusion]. You know, you just look around to your people. They’re all white Americans. I think it’s super important to state that you, at the end of the day, you lead by example. It’s as simple as that. It’s just a matter of mindset. You cannot to a board, you cannot put out a company statement, when you look around and everybody’s just like you, when your leadership team is just like you.

Andrew King: My background is basically sports and esports . . . and when you’re dealing with 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds, it’s a very different mindset. What you see as the leading edge is really catering to an audience that isn’t there yet. There is a lot that, ethically, we have to get our heads around, not just kind of the YouTube issues of click authorization, click acceptance for privacy, and things like that, but with some real issues regarding mental illness, mental health, addiction, and things like that that are going on. Esports is growing leaps and bounds, and that’s great for the owners and participants and stakeholders, but it’s also very problematic. It really doesn’t have the controls or the research in it to actually identify best practices and actually how we navigate it with the next generation of consumers.

Patrick Criteser: I’ve been at my company eight years, and the concept of purpose is something that has certainly evolved. My view is that employees have to resonate with the purpose. Increasingly, with your employees, there are fewer barriers to them opting into the company, and whether you’re a startup or 111 year-old company [like ours], you need the talent. You need people to identify with and share values with the company. So it starts there. In my mind, the rest of the business is constructed to serve that purpose. And the market either rejects it or accepts it.

Oliver Libby: We have 600 entrepreneurs in about 80 countries, starting them with very small amounts of capital very early in their entrepreneurship journey. For me, the two things that are the main lessons are, number one, impact and diversity are linked to high returns when done properly. Without quoting returns, I would say we are certainly outperforming industry benchmarks and disproving the fact that impact investing is concessionary. The second thing is that the more hands-on approach is really helpful. This idea that people place their bets on the roulette table and then the little ball spins around and maybe a unicorn shows up is not a really great way to invest over the long term. The venture capital industries’ returns demonstrate that pretty clearly. They underperform the S&P as a group.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90560412/new-rules-capitalism-purpose-sustainability

 Global Risks Report 2022

The Global Risks Report series tracks global risks perceptions among risk experts and world leaders in business, government, and civil society. It examines risks across five categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological. Every year the report also analyses key risks to explore further in deep-dive chapters—these could be risks that feature prominently on our survey, those for which warning signs are beginning to surface, or potential blind spots in risk perceptions.

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Global_Risks_Report_2022.pdf  

 The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History : https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/8903039 )

Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

Samuel Moyn

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269282-humane


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