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The United Nations needs a complete overhaul and countries should be banned from spending more on arms than on aid.Every person ought to spend an afternoon writing an essay with this title. It is stimulating to dream about how we could change our world.
Putting daydreams aside, a re-engineering of global governance is long overdue. Communicable diseases spread as rapidly as viral videos, multinational corporations are more powerful than many governments, and climate change does not respect borders. Arms sales, agricultural subsidies and energy strategies are agreed with little thought of the repercussions, which can include refugee migrations, famine, pandemics, environmental degradation and civil wars.
If I could, I would overhaul the United Nations system. In six-and-a-half decades, the UN has worked hard to bring about greater international co-operation in managing and overcoming common challenges. Its organisations have often been successful in redressing societal ills. But the system is in dire need of a serious rethink.
My highest priority would be to transform the UN security council: to revamp the council’s modus operandi for responding to longstanding tensions, armed conflicts, and other threats; to ensure representative membership; and to re-examine selective veto power. A humanitarian force, chartered with the “responsibility to protect” against war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other conflicts in which innocent civilians are the primary victims, would stand ready to intervene, to prevent the kind of slaughter taking place in Libya and elsewhere. The International Court of Justice would be granted compulsory global jurisdiction. A global energy agency would be launched to help nations achieve energy security and develop environmentally responsible strategies.
Many other mechanisms for global governance, including regional organisations, political alliances and economic forums, are dysfunctional, hamstrung by failures to adapt to our changing world. Stalemates on critical issues—climate change, arms control and trade—have become the norm. Our politics does not sufficiently take into account the increasingly globalised nature of society, and continues to treat many of these issues as a zero-sum game.
Consider our spending habits: how nations invest in the engines of war versus the arts of peace. Worldwide military expenditures last year cashed in at $1.6 trillion—an increase of 56 per cent since 2001, despite the ongoing global economic crisis. By contrast, official development assistance stood at $129bn.
There is no common sense in this strategy. If the past has taught us nothing else, it should have exposed the folly of believing that international security—or for that matter, the security of any nation—would be enhanced by investing in weapons, at a 12-to-1 ratio, rather than in development.
If I were handed the reins of global sovereignty, I would reprioritise the budgets of the world’s wealthiest nations. No government would be permitted to spend more on armaments and military force than on development assistance and humanitarian aid. The dividends—in prosperity, social cohesion, national and global peace, and security—would be immediate and dramatic.
A durable peace can be built only on a foundation of human security: that is, security based on the dignity and worth of every individual. If it were up to me, society would meet the basic needs of every human being—food, water, healthcare, and shelter—and every young person would receive a well-rounded education. Curriculums and learning methods would consciously de-emphasise differences of nationality, ethnicity, and stereotypes, replaced by an emphasis on tolerance and respect for our diversity, and appreciation of our collective cultural heritage.
In that context, no spending priority should be ranked higher than a global investment in the world’s children: inculcating in the next generation the ideals we would like to see embodied in their future.
This idyllic planet at peace with itself, this world I imagine for my infant granddaughters and their generation, is a world I will not live to see. But it is a vision I will pass on to my grandchildren; and one day, inshallah, they will live my dream.
