global governance calls for young people to come up with good solutions
2024-09-20
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on august 13, the "future summit" youth roundtable was held at renmin university of china in beijing. chinese and foreign youth representatives made group speeches and discussions on five topics of the un future summit. the picture shows peter david simon, vice chairman of the hungarian national youth council, speaking. photo by chen jian, china youth daily and china youth network reporter
from september 22 to 23, the united nations will hold its first future summit. "youth and future generations", along with sustainable development and financing, peace and security, digital future and global governance, will form the five main topics of the summit. on september 24, the general debate of the 79th session of the united nations general assembly will begin with the theme of "leaving no one behind: working together to promote peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations". against the backdrop of intensified geopolitical conflicts and many challenges facing global governance, the united nations has turned its attention to the younger generation.
earlier, after a free dialogue with chinese college student representatives at china youth daily, felipe paulie, the first un assistant secretary-general for youth, said that these young people with a sense of world citizenship, represented by chinese youth, clearly know that what they do will have an impact on the world and put it into action. this is the significance of the un sustainable development goals.
calling on "future generations" to promote the development of global governance
at the united nations headquarters, the venue of the future summit, chinese young man ye jian took the first step towards his dream of becoming "an excellent international civil servant."
ye jian is a master's student at the school of marxism at renmin university of china. he was sent to the department of safety and security of the united nations secretariat for an internship from july 2022 to january 2023. the department aims to ensure the safest and most effective implementation of programs and activities authorized by the united nations system worldwide. "the term 'promoting peace' in the theme of the future summit resonated deeply with me." ye jian told the china youth daily and china youth network reporter that from climate change and environmental protection to cultural exchanges and educational cooperation, young people can contribute a lot to promoting the improvement of global governance, world peace and development.
two years ago, during the 77th session of the un general assembly, ye jian accompanied the relevant person in charge of the chinese consulate general in new york to attend a meeting on the theme of "education reform". inspired by this, he founded the "china international organization internship exchange group" with other young chinese interns in the un system. as of april this year, young chinese people participating in this public welfare exchange community have covered 60 countries and nearly 90 international organizations around the world.
in may this year, he changchui, former deputy secretary-general of the united nations and former deputy director-general of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations, was invited to communicate with community members. this event, called the "global governance tea party", is a monthly routine event of this platform. according to ye jian, such an event is held to promote communication and mutual trust between young people in international organizations at home and abroad.
in june this year, ye jian also participated in the establishment of the english international academic journal "international economy and global governance", which is china's first "young scholar-oriented" international journal on global governance, aiming to provide young scholars from all countries with a cutting-edge, authoritative and rigorous academic research and thought exchange platform. what is the significance of promoting young people to participate in international organizations and global governance? ye jian believes that only by combining personal destiny with national development and changes of the times can life bloom with true brilliance.
ye jian has high expectations for the upcoming future summit. he especially hopes that the united nations can take substantive measures in areas such as accelerating the reform of the international financial architecture and enhancing the voice and representation of developing countries. according to the agenda, the summit will form outcome documents such as the "future compact", "global digital compact" and "declaration for future generations", which are expected to be adopted by member states during the summit.
niu zhongjun, associate professor of the department of diplomacy at the china foreign affairs university, pointed out in an interview with china youth daily and china youth network that this session of the un general assembly focuses on the "future", emphasizes the rights of "future generations", and calls on "future generations" to promote the development of global governance, which will inject new vitality into the united nations.
the need for strong multilateralism has never been more urgent
the future summit has been in preparation for a long time. in september 2021, at the commemorative summit for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the united nations, un secretary-general guterres first proposed the "future summit: multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow" in his report "our common agenda".
guterres believes that future summits provide an opportunity to "build more efficient and inclusive global cooperation institutions and tools". the united nations once said that if the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development, the paris agreement and the addis ababa action agenda are about "what to do" in terms of goal setting and commitment, then future summits are about "how to do it".
"the need for strong multilateralism has never been more urgent than it is now," jamil ahmed, head of intergovernmental affairs at the united nations environment programme, wrote in an article on september 15. niu zhongjun also pointed out that "peace" and "sustainable development" are the keywords of this session of the general assembly, which reflects the united nations' concern about the current global situation.
this is mainly due to two aspects: first, the ongoing conflicts in russia-ukraine, palestine-israel and other regions have led to instability in the world situation and an urgent need for a ceasefire; second, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is more than halfway through, but according to a report released by the united nations in june this year, only 17% of the sustainable development goals are progressing smoothly, and more than one-third of the goals are "stagnant or regressing", and the current progress is far from the desired goals. niu zhongjun pointed out that "only through sincere cooperation and joint efforts among countries can no one be left behind."
against this backdrop, us president biden will hold a "quadrilateral security dialogue" summit with the leaders of japan, australia and india in his hometown of wilmington, delaware from september 21 to 23, which seems out of place. "the so-called 'small circle' diplomacy is a form of alliance politics, which is fundamentally different from regional multilateralism," liu lianlian, deputy director of the center for international organization studies at peking university, told china youth daily and china youth network reporters.
according to a report by politico on september 12, the united states wants to win over the european union and is trying to promote the signing of a resolution to exclude china from the submarine cable network security project during this session of the un general assembly. eu member states are still discussing whether to join. in this regard, liu lianlian pointed out that alliance politics has a relatively clear "imaginary enemy". the purpose of its formation is competition and confrontation, not cooperation, and the scope is relatively closed. friends and enemies are usually distinguished by identity rather than behavior.
"as a basic norm of the international community since the 20th century, multilateralism has been widely recognized and supported by the international community. however, due to its similarities with alliance politics in terms of the aggregation of its members, this has provided opportunities for individual countries to advocate group confrontation under the banner of 'multilateralism'." liu lianlian pointed out that this is why china has repeatedly called on the international community in recent years to practice "true multilateralism" and strive to promote the global governance system to develop in a more just and reasonable direction.
cultivating talents for international organizations through inheritance and practice
in a signed article on september 4, guterres admitted that the united nations convened the future summit because of a real and unavoidable fact: the speed of change of global problems far exceeds the speed of innovation of the institutions designed to solve these problems.
"this exposes the fact that the 79-year-old united nations is facing many challenges: the un charter and many of its agencies can no longer adapt to the development of the new situation, the global financial system and other mechanisms are still dominated by the united states and western countries, and the resources the united nations can mobilize are limited..." niu zhongjun said that the united nations needs cooperation among countries to play a better role, and the united nations should also reform to improve its own operating efficiency.
in liu lianlian's view, some global problems caused by disordered global governance cannot be completely blamed on the united nations. for example, one of the important reasons why the united nations has failed to play an effective role in resolving international armed conflicts is that after world war ii, the international community has never properly handled the relationship between the united nations collective security system and regional military alliances such as nato. this problem cannot be completely solved through internal reforms of the united nations. it is necessary to achieve innovation in the global security governance mechanism from a more macro perspective.
it is precisely because of his recognition of the core role of the united nations in international affairs that ye jian firmly chose to delve into this field. he suggested that young people who are willing to participate in global governance activities read more national policy documents and continuously improve their cross-cultural communication skills. in the future, he hopes to gather as many young talents from international organizations as possible to make suggestions for optimizing and improving global governance.
liu lianlian is pleased to see that more and more chinese youth are actively participating in un-related activities. "compared with other major countries, china's history of multilateral diplomacy is relatively short. it was not until the past decade that china began to attach great importance to the training of talents and capacity building in multilateral diplomacy. talent training and capacity building need to be passed down from generation to generation, and they also need to be learned through practice." liu lianlian pointed out that young people are the backbone of china's future multilateral diplomacy and participation in global governance. the younger generation should be encouraged to actively participate in un activities and help them combine chinese sentiments with international vision in practice. this is of great significance to china's multilateral diplomacy in the next decade or even decades, and it is also one of the important ways for china to contribute wisdom to global governance.
"china is currently the second largest contributor to un dues and the second largest contributor to peacekeeping assessments. it is also the country that has sent the most peacekeeping military personnel among the five permanent members of the un security council. however, the proportion of chinese international staff in the un system is still relatively low, and there is still a lack of professionals who understand international rules. china's participation in global governance has certain capacity shortages." niu zhongjun pointed out that to solve this problem, the younger generation needs to actively pay attention to un affairs and international cooperation, focus on the future of human development, the realization of sustainable goals and the maintenance of international peace and security, and contribute new wisdom, new ideas and new solutions.
beijing, september 19th
china youth daily·china youth network intern reporter ma ziqian reporter jiang tian source: china youth daily
source: china youth daily
