Academic Council on the United Nations System Tokyo Liaison Office
Kyoto Peacebuilding Center
andGlobal Peacebuilding Association of Japan
present

Dr. Augusto Lopez Claros
Executive Director and Chair of the Global Governance ForumOn

Global Governance: Emerging Role of global institutions and Japanin the 21st Century
Tuesday, 16 May 2023
15:00~17:00

Report compiled by Maciej Witek

Opening remarks

Under-Secretary-General and Rector of the United Nations University, Dr. Tschilidzi
Marwala (sent in writing)
At the insistence of a dear friend of mine, Professor Suki
Hasegawa, it is my pleasure to join you in opening this
symposium to address the future role of global institutions
and Japan in strengthening global governance.
Despite the pessimistic views held by many policymakers,
scholars, and opinion-makers about the capability of theUnited Nations. I believe there are many ways in which the
UN can and should assist humanity in mitigating theadverse effects of man-made and natural disasters like the
Ukraine War and climate change, as well as artificial
intelligence, which can and should be mitigated. Attempting to mitigate the adverse effects of
the War in Ukraine, UN humanitarian assistance has already been provided to people in
Ukraine and other countries that have been affected by this conflict. The UN General
Assembly is holding discussions and expressing the member nations' views regarding the
Ukrainian War through its resolutions. As part of his peace efforts, the UN Secretary-Generalis trying to mediate an agreement between Kyiv and Moscow.

1

In terms of climate change, Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros provides a detailed explanation of how
humanity has ended up with the current perverse incentive structure and suggests the efficacyof pursuing a mixture of fiscal tools and regulatory policies, including carbon taxes that IMF
considers `the most powerful and efficient.` I agree with him that what is needed is strong
political will and leadership, as the UN has held so numerous meetings talking about the needto extend developing countries with financial and technical assistance in transitioning to
renewable energy sources.
As someone with an interest and expertise in artificial intelligence, you will also discuss in
depth how the UN help utilizes artificial intelligence, for example, in the following ways:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Establishing guidelines on the ethical creation and application of AI.
Language processing: The UN works in many languages so that AI can help withtranslations and sentiment analysis.
Develop a research agenda highlighting both the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence.
Enhancing the development of AI technologies that can address global challenges likeclimate change and poverty.

In addition, the UN should help:
1.
2.
3.

Raise awareness of these issues among the public.
Encourage businesses and individuals to take action, andBuild partnerships with other organizations working on these issues.

In conclusion, the UN plays a significant role in the development of the world. Our collective
efforts can make a difference, so joining forces is crucial. As I have other prior commitments,
I can stay for a discussion. But I look forward to hearing the outcome of your discussion
today.
Thank you, and all the best.

Part I Keynote Speech
Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros
Executive Director and Chair of the Global Governance
Forum
Dr. Lopez-Claros dedicated the first part of his speech to
Sustainable Development Goals, specifically related to climatechange. He noted that certain goals were established foremissions reduction, but that particular framework is not working.
Emissions are on the rise, the agreements that were embodied in2015 were voluntary, there were no penalties for non-compliance,
and the fact is that the scientific community is essentially telling us that we are facing a very
serious situation in the coming years. This is one area in which whatever mechanisms we havefor international cooperation at the moment are simply not working. We will be facing
increasing climate catastrophes in the coming years and decades, and this is greatly concerning2

because the temperature rises that we currently have, was not seen for at least a couple of million
years - we are entering uncharted territory.
On the security side, dr. Lopez-Claros referred to a very serious situation we are facing in
Ukraine, with Russia's unprovoked aggression against the country. Peace and security were theprimary responsibility of the United Nations, but this is not working either. There are risingtensions between the superpowers, namely US and China, who, in coming years, might wish totake Taiwan by force. We know very well if that were to happen, and we were to have a war inthis part of the world, that is going to have security and economic consequences 10 or 20 times
larger than what we have seen in the case of the war in Ukraine.
In terms of poverty and equality, the situation is also very worrying. Sustainable Development
Goal number 1, the basis of the entire framework, anticipated elimination of extreme poverty
by 2030. That goal is not obtainable, partially because of the COVID pandemic, and after thatthe war in Ukraine. The latest data from the World Bank suggests that by 2030 we will still havesomewhere between 500 and 600 million people living below the extreme poverty line. Also,
the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor is no longer just an economic problem, it
is a serious social problem. Income inequality is destabilizing societies, undermining the basisof democracy, and leading to all kinds of other problems, which are a clear danger to the stabilityof our societies.
Dr. Lopez-Claros admitted that he would prefer not to rank the aforementioned problems, but
if he had to do so, he would say that climate change is the most urgent at the moment. The lasttime that we seriously looked at the global order, attempted to rethink it and establish someframework to enhance international cooperation and allow us to create a basis for peace andprosperity, and stability, was in 1945 at the time of the adoption of the UN Charter. We candebate whether the Charter was a great achievement or it was a missed opportunity, somearguments can be presented on both sides. The initial vision of the UN was very ambitious – tocreate a world legislator and give it the power to make international law that will be binding for
all countries. In fact, people who participated in the debate on what exactly the UN should be
were inspired by the US Federal Constitution which in 1787 created a new layer of government,
and gave to those institutions a huge amount of jurisdiction and other attributes which
essentially created a complex peace and stability in the US. Many people argue that was theprimary engine that ultimately converted the US into the most powerful, prosperous country in
the world. That was the idea, but it did not work out. Stalin was not interested and agreed tosign in to the UN, as long as this organization never imposes its will on his national priorities.
And that is how the idea of veto came to be. Roosevelt himself knew that for the US to adopt
the UN Charter, he needed 2/3 of the senators to approve it. There was immediately an effort towater down the Charter and create a document acceptable to all of the senators. Dr. LopezClaros is of the view that the UN Charter was a wasted opportunity in the sense that it was not
an adequate response to the 60 million casualties in World War II. One important aspect of theconference in San Francisco which he highlighted is that 17 countries were very annoyed at the
introduction of the veto. In San Francisco US and Soviet Union told the other members "Either
you accept the veto in the Security Council or there is no United Nations”. That was a very
bipolar situation. A group of 17 countries led by New Zealand said that this is not acceptable,3they will not be a part of this process. Eventually, they adopted the Charter, but article 109 wasintroduced – which essentially says "We can attend a review conference to examine theappropriateness of the Charter”. At the moment we have Summit of the Future in 2024. At thissummit two fundamental questions have to be answered: What kind of future do we want? How
are we going to get there? The report that came out from the High-Level Advisory Board
Meeting recommends having the review conference soon, to make sure that we will end up inthat future that we all want.
The book that Dr. Lopez-Claros published, "Global Governance and the Emergence of Global
Institutions for the 21st Century” is a series of proposals that are aimed at rethinking our global
governance structure, so the UN can be brought into the XXI century. There is a chapter on thereform of the Security Council and a proposal for the creation of the World Parliamentary
Assembly. The UN can be funded in a more sustainable way than it is now. Dr. Lopez-Claros
explained some of the content of his book and noted that earlier that day during the conversation
with several members of the parliament, he was very pleased to see that the notion of World
Parliamentary Assembly has a lot of support in Japanese parliament. This idea in its essence is
to strengthen the legitimacy of the UN. At the moment the way the General Assembly isorganized is that the people who seat at the General Assembly are diplomats representing theparty back in power. However, the UN Charter says "We the people". What is missing, and what
Albert Einstein already alluded to in his letter to the General Assembly in 1947, is directly
electing members of the General Assembly. At the moment that is not possible but a World
Parliamentary Assembly could be created as one more agency, without amending the Charter.
Initially, like the European Parliamentary Assembly of 1958, it could be made up ofparliamentarians of the member countries. In the beginning, it did not make laws, but it camelittle by little over time to the direct election and today it can pass the legislation that is binding
for all European Union Member States. For us, that is a very useful model. The World
Parliamentary Assembly would discuss climate change, human rights, issues of inequality,
providing intelligence and advice to the other UN bodies, and in time we could give it morejurisdiction and power.
There are ways in which we could reorganize Security Council and make it less dysfunctional.
What happened last year is a very good example. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there wasimmediately an attempt for the Security Council to issue a resolution condemning the invasion.
The Russians vetoed that, and within a couple of days it went to the General Assembly with noveto power, and then a strong resolution was issued condemning the invasion and asking Russia
to withdraw. The way that the UN works is that if you are a member of the Security Council
with veto power, you can violate every principle of the UN charter and remain in good standing.
This is a very dysfunctional arrangement. And yet, in 1944 we had the UN Monetary and
Financial Conference. When the moment came to ask the question how are we going to govern
ourselves? They did not say we will have 5 permanent members with veto power to run the
global economy. The important principle they introduced was the idea that every country will
have a voice and representation. That is the way the organization worked ever since, and it
works relatively well. If we organize the Security Council in a way that preserves the spirit ofthat structure, namely that every country has a voice and every country is represented, we do
not have that very strange system of many years when Japan or India, one of the largest4populations and contributors to the UN budget, do not have a voice. This is a very unusual wayof operating an organization that is supposed to be about cooperation and collegiality, working
together to solve world problems.

Part II Discussion
During the discussion, Ambassador Hans Klemm admitted
that the argument of the dysfunctionality of the UN system isvery on point but also noted that there were some successes of
the UN system. Now there are hundreds of peacekeeping
missions, as well as developmental missions, including TimorLeste from 2007-2010. That mission and probably many others
as successes that bring stabilization, developing institutional
structures, and trying to contribute to economic development
and the rule of law. After the mission ended, Timor-Lesteenjoyed political stability and security among its neighbors, and while it is still a very much
lower-income country, it has seen some development.
Dr. Lopez-Claros agreed that, absolutely, the example of Timor-Leste is viable. Some missions
were very successful, some were not, and that is the nature of things. His criticism of the UN
system as it is now, should not be interpreted as a lack of recognition for the victory or successesin small areas across the world. He and the authors of the book propose to reorganize theGeneral Assembly under the system of weighted voting. Not one country, one vote, that is nota reasonable arrangement that undermined the credibility of the General Assembly. We could
say that there was kind of a cynical move on the part of the big powers to essentially concentrate
all the power in the Security Council instead of the General Assembly. There is a fairly detailed
proposal suggesting reorganizing the General Assembly under the system of weighted voting
using three factors: population, relative GDP, and membership factor equal to all the countries.
It can give small countries like Timor-Leste the same weight as China or India. Instead of having
permanent and rotating members, we have 193 members of the Security Council. The second
reform proposed in the book is that instead of calling it Security Council, we call it Executive
Council. It becomes an organization in charge of the day-to-day running of the UN system. It
is the General Assembly under the weighted voting system that possesses the real politicalpower – which was the original vision for the UN.
Later discussants expressed their concerns about the current stateof the UN, drawing attention to the privileges of Permanent 5 andthe necessity of giving a voice to all countries. Professor Vesselin
Popovski noted that somehow we can think of how to repair what
has not been done in 1945 exactly with the act of 109. The war in
Ukraine created a new dynamism. Mostly in terms of global unity
to face an aggressor. How can we live in the future where one ofthe permanent members, instead of being a guardian of peace,becomes the most blatant aggressor, almost similar to Nazi
Germany back in 1939? That dynamism which we see almost daily, is creating a stimulus for a5

more radical vision of the UN reform and not pushing for new permanent memberships, but
thinking if we even need permanent members and a veto anymore.

Ambassador Tadanori Inomata stated that in the current UN,
countries are equal on the one hand, then there is the Permanent 5.
Those states are not equal. Why do these five countries haveprerogatives? This is not efficient. During the time of the League of
Nations, all member states had a right of veto. The worsening
situation today shows the fundamental defect of the UN charter. We
have to abolish the permanent membership in the Security Council.

Ambassador Yasuyoshi Komizo noted that global issues are allinterconnected, and one solution will not solve all the other problems.
Leaders and the people should focus on whether the UN reform will
benefit all the people in the world, not only selected ones.
In response to the comments, dr. Lopez-Claros noted that it is very
fundamental to understand that it is one thing to write a book about
ambitious proposals for the UN reform, rethinking our system ofglobal institutions and international cooperation, and then there is thepolitical reality. He thinks that the comments made by Professor
Popovski are highly relevant here. When the proposal was put on the table to this High-Level
Advisory Board to consider Charter review in the context of Article 109, nobody expected thatthey would take it seriously and endorse it in the report. That means something has changed in
the mentality. Charter reform that used to be taboo is no longer a taboo, and part of the reason
for that is because there is growing frustration with the deteriorating situation in the world on
several different fronts and the fact that the UN seems to be completely on the sidelines—all
the successes of the past notwithstanding. Global systemic risks, like climate change, threaten
humankind. The fact that in 2023 in the context of the war in Ukraine, we broke the nuclear
taboo - the weapons are there, but we never talk about using them. But Vladimir Putin broke
the taboo and openly discussed using nuclear weapons. For the first time in the UN's history,
all of a sudden, we realize that either we do something, or essentially the UN becomes irrelevant
as an organization. In that scenario, maybe we should think about creating a new organization.
The UN came to replace the League of Nations. In coming years, with multiple crises on
different fronts affecting people’s security, there might be a point where the situation becomesso critical that we realize this is not a way to run the world. We need to do something. Dr. LopezClaros thinks the Summit of the Future is one last chance to address those issues in a cooperative,
ambitious way. In his opinion, if the summit becomes yet another UN summit that is good on

6paper but with no implications for the real world, then we will have lost a big chance, and hewill become very pessimistic.
The next scenario is a kind of World War II scenario, where the system collapsed, and we needto think about what we are going to replace it with. That will be the role of young people. In theyear 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had a brilliant initiative. In May of 2000, he
invited 1500 representatives from civil society to New York to debate what are the world's
problems, how we can solve them, and work better together in order to change our mindset.
The idea was that this NGO forum would make recommendations to the September Millenium
Summit, which was going to be the largest congregation of world leaders. To empower civilsociety in that way was a great idea. It would be wonderful if that NGO forum were formalized.
Let it take place on a regular basis, to empower youth organizations so they can be part of theconversation. People in their 60s might catch some of the early beginnings of climate change,
but young people are going to face all of it. The older generation needs to find a way to give avoice to the youth because they are going to face the consequences of past mistakes.
In terms of SDGs, dr. Lopez-Claros was not surprised when the World Bank did a forecast for2030 for SDG number 1. Due to the COVID pandemic, it got out of reach. For the previous 30
years, we have seen a reduction in extreme poverty year after year without interruption. It was
one of the successes, but then COVID and Ukraine crisis came, and now we live in a different
environment. But for Dr. Lopez-Claros it is a lesson in whether we fulfill the SDGs by 2030,
what is important is the direction of change, are we moving in the right direction? This is where
he is a little pessimistic. Speaking about SDG number 5, we are not making enough progress interms of eliminating discrimination against women. Here dr. Lopez-Claros shared an anecdote.
A few years ago he was in Moscow and had a meeting with the economic team of the Russian
government about ways in which the country can create a more friendly environment for theprivate sector. It was in 2016, Russia's economy was already under sanctions after Crimea, theeconomy slowed down. Dr. Lopez-Claros asked the minister, what about eliminating at least
some of the 456 occupations which are forbidden to women in Russia? The minister wasshocked that there are that many. For example, in Russia, women cannot drive a metro. How
many of those prohibitions have been lifted since then? Zero.
Regarding Article 23, the attitude of the Permanent 5 was always like the UN Charter did notbind them. They signed it, but they exempted themselves from the obligations – this is theessence of the veto. Dr. Lopez-Claros shared some views from the economist's perspective. The
value of the veto power is rapidly declining and going to zero. Looking at the case of Ukraine,
if the veto power were a powerful instrument, it would have had some impact, but it had zero.
There was no resolution from the Security Council condemning the war. But has it prevented
the rest of the international community from assisting Ukraine? Has it protected Russia fromits “special military operation” and empowered it? Absolutely not. Today they broke the nuclear
taboo because they are facing defeat and are desperate. The veto power has very little powerother than symbolism. In a world where the veto has zero value, because faced with the veto,other countries, NATO, EU take their own actions, at some point, we have to make it explicit
and move to a new system where there is no veto.

7

At the end of discussion, Professor Sukehiro Hasegawa summarized
the discussion and shared his own views on the UN reform. He
referred to what PM Kishida said in September 2022 at the General
Assembly that the time had come to reform the Security Council. Veto
should not be abused. We should make the UN Security Council moredemocratic. We should stop talking about its reform in general, andput down in writing, what we had to do.
Dr. Hasegawa noted that what participants advised during the
symposium was the need for change in the mindset and understandingthat the veto was a protection of the power, not a solution to the global
challenges. The proposal of the Japanese government was as follows: let us not make the reform
agenda very complicated. If we made it complicated, we would never get anywhere. In 196365 the only change made in the Security Council Charter was an increase in the number ofmembers of the Security Council from 10 to 15. We now had an agreement among all groups,
consisting of the G4, Consensus Group, African Group, Caribbean, and R69, which is a groupof small nations demanding that their place should also be secured there. There was now some
progress made.
In conclusion, Dr. Hasegawa expressed his hope that the General Assembly would consider atext-based solution and propose that the Security Council seats be increased by 10. And half of
those seats should be between 8-10 years. We should have another five countries elected for 45 years. That would enable all the countries to talk about their own entitlement for the Security
Council seats. We can work for another 20 years with this seating arrangement until 2045, whichis the 100 anniversary of the establishment of the UN. Then, we can go for debunking the 5permanent memberships. They should also be elected for terms of 20 years. This arrangement
will compel all of them to behave as they would be voted out if they misbehaved. This is theidea that the government of Japan should be advocating.

8