On July 1, 2024, I was privileged to join a cohort of exceptionally gifted and talented individuals drawn from 6 continents at the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland (UNOG). This convening followed an April 2024 award and the invitation to attend the United Nations Graduate Study Program (GSP), the longest-running graduate-level educational program of the United Nations. According to official records, over 3000 youth across 110 countries worldwide have graduated from the GSP in the past 6 and a half decades. Now in its 62nd anniversary, the 2024 GSP remains the most competitive in its entire lifespan. In the words of Miladin Bogetic, the Press Officer at the United Nations Information Service who also doubles as the Program Convenor, the Selection Committee was confronted with the hard exercise of choosing 54 participants from over 1,800 applications submitted this year, a register of the program’s growing demand.
Themed “Summit of the Future: Challenges and Opportunities” this year’s GSP explored and analysed the challenges and opportunities of the United Nations as contained in the Pact of the Future, the United Nations’s reforms signature for humanity’s tomorrow.
In its technical sense, the GSP entailed intensely designed lectures, institutional tours and group work templates partitioned into mornings, afternoons and evenings throughout the week – 9:00 am-6 pm for two weeks. It was the most intense graduate-level fellowship undertaking I have taken yet. A diverse mix of representatives drawn from various international organisations and institutions across the United Nations and the ‘International Geneva’ delivered the lectures. They comprised the civil sector representatives, diplomats, academics and working professionals with several years of work experience across various domains and organisational settings.
Institutional tours were facilitated by a designated UN Tour Guide who not only provided the architectural complexity of the UNOG but also its historical dynamic owing to Geneva’s warmth and generosity as the host of the Leagues of Nations and its continued relevance as a neutral station for a world riddled with more geopolitical disagreements than consensus. As complemented by one of the speakers, formerly a Senior UN Careerist, in a morning lecture on July 2nd, Geneva’s 500 years of generosity, warmth and neutrality is unparalleled and continues to be so. That was indeed the case whenever I would take Trams, a local bus between my Rue de la Tambourine residence to Palais, (the United Nations Complex). Despite the linguistic barriers imposed by a predominantly French and German-speaking local, I could not fail to account for the unrivalled courtesy and kindness of the Swiss people – and indeed, ‘International Geneva’ as they call it.
Lectures were diverse and generally informative on selected topics covering the five broader chapters that the Pact of the Future stipulates (Financing Sustainable Development, International Peace and Security, Science, Technology and Innovation and Digital Cooperation, Youth and Future Generations, and Transforming Global Governance). They were delivered in an hour followed by 30 minutes of interactive exercises between the speakers and the GSP delegates – a moment of great reckoning for me.
While delivering his remarks on the normative and the analytical aspects of the ‘International Geneva’ the renowned international civil servant spoke to the invincibility of Geneva as a centre for knowledge and research dissemination on global issues citing among others, the invaluable role played by the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the pandemic. While this is incontestable, I inquired from them what their views were regarding the growing dissent dubbed the ‘Headquarters Problems’ a situation in which global issues with national effects are decided in Geneva and New York with little attention to the local actors and solutions. In their view, the problem settled with the institutional gaps apparent within the practice of nation-states under the United Nations. There is, they disclosed, no existing formula for prioritising (de-prioritising) which global issues should be merited over the others. The closest body, they argued, would be the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) given its rather democratic oversight of an equal vote yet as they disclosed, performance has been rather disturbing citing the political interference from the Permanent Five (P5), the United Nations’s Vetoe-holding countries (China, Russia, UK, US and France). As they put it, ‘The UN is veto and the Veto is the UN,’ a disclosure of the deep-seated structural dilemmas facing the world body today.
These views were widely shared across the board both during the lectures and across group work deliberations. There is a generous consensus on what fundamentally constitutes the problem of the United Nations – it is political rather than technical. And it lies largely within the Security Council, a body that has defied any meaningful reforms since its creation several years ago. In his impassioned plenary remarks presented through the ‘Building Lasting Peace – Critical Role of Action at the Local Level’ another highly reputed international peace diplomat emphasised the urgency to sustain international peace-making efforts within and outside the United Nations. In what he dubbed ‘human-centric rather than state-centric approaches to international peace and security, the diplomat decried the continued securitisation of global events. In his view, the Summit of the Future should extend beyond just an event but should incorporate the perspectives of non-state actors in the grand design of the future we want and desire to see. More specifically, the diplomat challenged the United Nations to ensure the meaningful participation of youth and women in reconstructing peace narratives. In his opinion, peace agreements absent deliberate inputs and outputs of these groups will ‘lead to catastrophic ends.’
However, emphasis on the localising rhetoric to violent prevention and sustaining durable peace is not new. The elephant in the room is the ‘So What’ question after peace agreements (inclusive or not) are signed. To expand the discussion, I asked the diplomat, drawing from the South Sudanese experiences (a country in whose peace processes he undertook), ‘How do we ensure that peace is sustainable and that countries are not caught in the so-called ‘transitional trap?’ In his response, the diplomat termed my question as ‘fundamental’ revealing a pattern of global peace-building initiatives that in his words, ‘focus on narrow humanitarian ends’ (except Colombia) and therefore, unsustainable in the long haul. Agreements, stressed the diplomat, are only meaningful when they are translated into tangible processes that can transform the lives of those destroyed by the fragments of war. Local processes matter because as he put it (referencing his former boss), ‘the UN and other multilateral bodies are only as good as their member states want them to be.’
The exchanges we had with visiting lecturers and speakers such as those mentioned above were furthered during the group assignments. Working on a Group titled ‘Transforming Global Governance’ my group and I grappled with multiple issues that are at the heart of the United Nations today. We were asked to make recommendations that would substantially change the business of the UN as we know it, a daunting task to be had in 10 days. Moderated by Kathryn Elizabeth Hennessey, Special Assistant to the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, this group was arguably the most challenging of all. Specifically, we were tasked to propose, and advance reforms within the UN system and the broader multilateral system under two broad questions seeking to make the UN and the broader multilateral system more effective, relevant and appropriate for the 21st century needs.
Given our short period, we focused our attention on the big elephants shaping the UN system and the multilateral system (in our view). We reviewed and reflected upon the current reforms agenda across the UN and the multilateral environment and proposed concrete and actionable reforms for the UN focusing on the Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and the Bretton Wood Institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). These findings will be published on the United Nations web portal next month.
On the individual front, I had the privilege to work on a section about reforming the current multilateral financing architecture, calling for a vulnerability-based financing strategy for the forcibly displaced especially the refugees and a sensitive debt financing structure for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and other fragile economies in the global south. More specifically, I proposed that, given the current debacle facing the refugee funding regime, a dedicated multilateral development bank with a separate balance sheet from the existing multilateral banking system be established that would fund the refugees, their ideas and businesses. This reform is imperative in light of the current humanitarian funding crisis that is often politicised by nation-states and their co-opted international aid agencies.
Beyond the technicality of the GSP however, this year’s cohort was immersed in the social life of the International Geneva – touring its magnificent wonders and historical sites. One of my favourites was Lake Geneva, a site of regaining strength after a week of studies and group work. For most of us, the UN Beach played wonders. I will not forget the moment of excitement seeing some of the GSP Cohort dancing in the rain while others took to the lake to bask and interact with the waters as it drizzled outside. Even more memorable was the last dinner I had with three colleagues, two of whom, were Nigerians at a Senegalese restaurant at the heart of Geneva serving West African dishes. I had my first taste of the famed West African Jollop Rice (Senegalese type) known locally as Thiéboudienne. The dinner served as a rewarding way to say goodbye to Geneva – at least for then.
Matai Muon 