Despite the development of a variety of mechanisms to assist states in meeting their human rights obligations under international law, significant challenges in terms of implementation and compliance remain. This paper explores these challenges and offers recommendations to strengthen the multilateral system’s capacity to promote and ensure respect for human rights and foster accountability and justice for violations.
This paper assesses recent multilateral efforts to take advantage of the opportunities and address the challenges these new technologies present. It also explores how the UN can determine where it can play a useful role related to new technologies and where existing mechanisms and other actors may be better placed.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change were adopted with an unprecedented sense of ownership by member states, and both are universally applicable. In 2016, the UN has the opportunity and the challenge to operate under the most comprehensive sustainable development agenda in its history.
More actors, institutions, and networks of interests are engaged in the international sphere than ever before. This paper discusses three of those: regional organizations; civil society and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and the private sector. It will also ask how the UN system can better leverage relations with and among these actors, institutions, and networks for a more efficient and legitimate multilateral system.
This paper addresses the current state of migration, displacement and refugee flows around the globe, looking beyond the immediate crisis stemming from Syria to the need for long term solutions. It simultaneously focuses on the challenges and opportunities faced by countries of origin, transit, and destination. It also offers key recommendations on how the multilateral system, particularly the United Nations, can adapt and respond to this unprecedented level of human mobility.
Nearly 1.2 billion people live in fragile states, including one‐third of the world’s poor. Fragile states are vulnerable to internal and external shocks, including armed conflict. Challenges emerging from fragile states, such as transnational threats, regional spillovers, and local insecurity and under‐development require the attention of multilateral institutions.