CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL

GOVERNANCE:
THE UNITED NATIONS MEETS
THE 21ST CENTURY
OBJECTIVES

• Identify the roles and functions of the United Nations (UN);

• Describe the challenges of global governance in the 21st
century;
• Explain the relevance of the nation-state in the midst of
globalization; and
• Create a poster that depicts the participation of the Philippines
in the global community
01
THE UNITED NATIONS AND
CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE
 02
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATION
 03
THE UNITED NATIONS
 04
THE CENTRAL CHALLENGE
01
THE UNITED NATIONS AND
CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE
 Although many internationalists like Bentham and Kant
imagined the possibility of a global government, nothing
of the sort exists today. The fact that states in an
international order continue to adhere to certain global
norms means that there is a semblance of world order
GLO despite the lack of a single world government.
GOVE GBAL
RNAN
CE Global governance refers to the various intersecting
processes that create this order. Even ideas such as the
need for "global democracy" or the clamor for "good
governance" can influence the ways international actors
behave. One lesson will not be able to cover the various
ways global governance occurs.
 02
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATION
Scholars refer to groups like the UN or institutions like
the IMF and the World Bank, they usually call them
international organizations. Although international
NGOs are sometimes considered as IOS, the term is
commonly used to refer to international
intergovernmental organizations or groups that are
primarily made up of member-states.

International Organizations are merely amalgamations

of various state interests, and can be sources of great
good and great harm.
 03
THE UNITED NATIONS
Having examined the powers, limitations, and weaknesses of IOS,
the spotlight will now fall on the most prominent 10 in the
contemporary world, the United Nations. After the collapse of the
League of Nations at the end of World War Il, countries that
worried about another global war began to push for the formation
of a more lasting international league. The result was the creation
of the UN.

Although the GA is the most representative organization in the

UN, many commentators consider the Security Council to be the
most powerful. The SC takes the lead in determining the
existence of a threat to the peace or an act of aggression.
MAIN ORGANS OF UNITED NATIONS

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY (GA) – The “main deliberative policy making and
representative organ” and the most representative organization of the United Nations.

THE SECURITY COUNCIL (SC) – Takes the lead in determining the existence of a
threat to the peace or an act of aggression, and settle the act by peaceful means and
recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL – The principal body for coordination, policy
review, policy dialogue and recommendations on economic, social and environmental
issues, as well as implementation of internationally agreed development goals
TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL – Provides international supervision for 11 Trust Territories
that had been placed under the administration of seven Member States, and ensure
that adequate steps were taken to prepare the Territories for self-government and
independence.

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE – The principal judicial organ of the United

Nations. It’s role is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes
submitted to it by States and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it
by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies.

SECRETARIAT – Comprises the Secretary-General and tens of thousands of

international UN staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as
mandated by the General Assembly and the Organization's other principal organs.
 04
THE CENTRAL CHALLENGE
1. THE MISMATCH OF GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS
AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES

The institutional framework for dealing with contemporary global challenges

does not match the scope, scale and nature of the challenges themselves
where global challenges of the 21st century seem to exceed the grasp of the
current international framework as the 20th century represented the
culmination of a long history of the nation-state as the institutional framework.
SPECIFIC MANIFESTATIONS OF INSTITUTIONAL INADEQUACY
The United Nations Security Council as a creation of the post-World War II alliance
in 1945 is confronting a crisis of obsolescence.

Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle in 1999, there is a
growing demand for changes in the voting shares in the Bretton Woods Institutions
(the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) to better reflect current
realities.

Embedded in these reform issues but beyond them is growing reality and tension
concerning the uni-polar nature of the military, economic, media and political power
of the United States in its conduct foreign policy.

Global challenges in the global age seem to be characterized more by

interconnectedness rather than by isolation that throws an international system
based on “specialized agencies” into a state of inadequacy as the nature of
contemporary interconnected problems based on specialization.
2. CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES FOR FRAMING
PROBLEMS AND APPROACHES.
(SPECIALIZATION VS. INTEGRATION)

20th century was based on the Western notion of progress rooted in the
universality of human knowledge derived from specialization in disciplines and
problem areas wherein its modernism for much of the 20th century was
understood in the West especially as a universal form of modernism which
would be shared by all humanity.

20th century challenges were seen as requiring specialization within domains to

develop the knowledge and approaches necessary to address them, the
challenges of the 21st century seem to be ones which require understanding the
interlinkages between challenges and the interfaces between them rather than
only burrowing deeper within the problem area itself as the primary means of
developing approaches.
3. THE GLOBAL AGE AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES
FRAMEWORKS AND GOALS FOR THE GLOBAL AGE

UNIVERSALLY ENDORSED FRAMEWORKS FOR PRIORITIZING

GLOBAL ISSUES AND SETTING GOALS:
Millenium Declaration Goals

Millenium Development Goals

Both are derived from a sequence of UN conferences in the early to mid-1990s which
generated a plethora of recommendations for action on human rights, population social
development and women. These world conferences led to a prioritization of seven
International Development Goals by national authorities, development cooperation
ministers of industrial countries, in May 1996 focusing on poverty, gender equality,
education, health and environment goals to be achieved by 2015.
THANK
YOU!