Making the UN ‘Fit for Purpose’: Lessons from the ‘Delivering as One’ Experience
Nearly 60 years have passed since the UN development system was established and, during these years, the world has changed significantly. The UN system faces challenges in keeping pace with the world around it and in remaining a leading ‘partner of choice’ in a rapidly changing world.
Peace Diplomacy, Global Justice and International Agency
As UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld shaped many of the fundamental principles and practices of international organisations, such as preventive diplomacy, the ethics of international civil service, impartiality and neutrality. He was also at the heart of the constitutional foundations and principles of the UN. This tribute and critical review of Hammarskjöld’s values and legacy examines […]
Older Persons and the Post-2015 Agenda – a Sub-Saharan Perspective
There are multiple priorities under consideration in the post-2015 development agenda. If however, we are to approach the dialogue through a life-cycle lens, then the issues related to ageing and the demographic shifts cannot be left behind. Globally, by 2030, persons aged 60 and above (older persons) will outnumber children under the age of 10. […]
Post-2015 and the Poison Threads – Shift the Gaze
In this paper Amitabh Behar talks about the ‘golden threads’ of global development versus the ‘poison threads‘, the latter according to Behar are the real causes of endemic poverty, growing inequality and exclusion. ‘The global leadership and the UN face the sizable challenge of making a historic choice between continuing the legacy and hegemony of […]
Renewing UN Development
This paper argues that if true multilateralism in the global socio-economic arena is to be saved, there needs to be a radical re-think of what the UN delivers to its increasingly heterogeneous group of member states in the development field. The fundamental challenge for the UN development system is to reposition itself so that it […]
Global Food Governance
‘Due to a lack of broad global governance structures for food security; food and agriculture is today largely managed by actors promoting a discourse of trade liberalisation and a “new green revolution”, which has many drawbacks, especially for small-scale farmers (smallholders)’, argues Josefin Smeds in this Paper. Many small-scale farmers and civil society actors offer […]
Inclusivity in Peacebuilding
Do internationally supported peacebuilding initiatives manage to reach all of the people engaged in and affected by conflict? How can the international community move beyond token engagement of local stakeholders to support a peace that is genuinely locally owned and locally led? These are pertinent questions that the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and partners explore in […]
Open Leadership
Jan Vandemoortele argues in development dialogue paper no.2 ‘Post-2015 – why another approach is needed’ that it is time for the UN to cut back on dialogue and focus the post-2015 consultations more directly towards a development agenda that is easy to communicate, implement and monitor. In this paper Jose Dallo advocates that continuous and inclusive dialogue […]
Is the UN Development System Becoming Irrelevant?
The challenges described in development dialogue paper no.3, ‘UN Development at a Crossroads’, are elaborated further here. One particular problem is the lack of a unifying paradigm consolidating the ideational and operational parts of the UN Development system. Human Development could have been such a paradigm but failed to achieve a universal status partly due […]
UN Development at a Crossroads
The UN development system stands at a crossroads. It can either embrace the deepreform required to remain relevant to development in today’s global economy, or face the prospect of continued marginalisation. The path chosen at this juncture depends on the commitment of all relevant actors – UN agencies and governments – as well as strong […]