Reforming the United Nations: An interview with Sandro Calvani

I met Sandro Calvani in Milan on February 18, 2023, where we were both speaking at a conference. I listened to his speech on the possible reform of the United Nations. Taking my cue from that talk, which I found extremely interesting, I decided to interview Calvani for the readers of La Civiltà Cattolica. Calvani has had an extensive career as a senior United Nations official, living and working in 135 countries around the world, in particular in his role at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Among the many assignments he received were as regional director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, director of the UN’s anti-drug and anti-crime program, based in Bangkok, with responsibility for 31 countries in the region; and then he was director of the same program in Colombia.

In 2007 he was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as director of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. From September 2010 to June 2013 he was executive director of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Center of Excellence on the Millennium Development Goals. He has written some 30 books on his experiences among the world’s poorest. He is a lecturer in Human Rights and Sustainable Development Policy at various Asian universities.

We are here to discuss the UN and its possible reform. First I would like to summarize the situation with you. Let us start with the origin of the United Nations. What events led to its founding?

Eighty years ago, at the end of World War II, the United Nations was born out of a shared vision of governments and peoples to reform international relations, to make them collaborative, inclusive and peaceful. The first “Declaration of the United Nations” was signed in Washington on January 1, 1943. The “Declaration on Peace and Security” was signed in Moscow on November 1, 1943, by the representatives of China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. It recognized the need to establish a general international organization as soon as possible, “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, open to all states for the maintenance of international peace and security.” At the time of the creation of the UN, during the San Francisco conference on June 26, 1945, U.S. President Truman told the representatives of the 51 founding states: “The charter of the United Nations you are signing establishes a solid structure on which we can build a better world. History will honor you for it.” It was in these somewhat utopian, and yet somewhat realistic terms that the signatory states expressed their vision of the peacemaking role of this new kind of organization. Today there are 193 member countries. Another 44 nations still struggling for their independence are not yet UN members.

What are the functions of the UN? Would you explain them to us?

According to the provisions of the founding Statute, the UN has four functions: to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in the resolution of international problems and the promotion of respect for human rights; and to be a center for harmonizing various national initiatives. The establishment of peace is a goal only partially achieved; many conflicts have been stopped, too many, however, continue to threaten the security of humanity.

The UN acts through certain bodies. How do they work?

The UN originally was made up of six main bodies. Five of these – the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council and the Secretariat – are located at the UN headquarters at the Glass Palace in New York. The sixth – the International Court of Justice – is based in The Hague, Netherlands. During its 78 years of diverse activities, some 50 specialized programs and agencies have sprung up alongside the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Some of them, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), have become very large in terms of budgets and staff. The International Court is a judicial body, thus independent of the will of governments. It has been able to prevent numerous conflicts when member states have submitted their disputes to it. The Security Council, which decides on the Council’s attitude to almost all matters relating to peace and security, has an “oligarchic” character. It consists of 10 member countries, elected by rotation, and five permanent member countries, some of the victors of World War II: China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States. They have unlimited veto rights. No reform proposal has ever seriously challenged this anomaly.

Faced with the challenges of the global crisis, which is political, environmental, economic, social and ethical, the UN, the main multilateral system of international governance, sometimes seems ineffective and almost useless. In your opinion, how is the UN really doing?

In more than three-quarters of a century, the goal of greatly reducing the anarchy seen before World War II on many international issues has been achieved. The UN has addressed almost exclusively important but thematically limited issues, for example, the regulation of telecommunications, air navigation, passport recognition, some aspects of international trade, and has initiated major programs to help children, women, the poor and refugees. In contrast to this success, with regard to the major issues of the global community, such as public health, the environment and climate change, the universal application of human rights, the right to water and food, migration and especially peacekeeping, some progress has been made only as to the consensus built and ratified on what should be done, but very rarely achieved fully in practice. The most serious governmental failure to act, which is causing millions of casualties, relates to climate change. In 2020, 14,900 scientists from 158 countries signed an urgent appeal calling on governments to take the steps necessary for humanity’s survival.

What have you to say about peacekeeping?

With respect to peacekeeping, from 1945 to the present, various member states, not only military powers, have broken the peace treaties they had signed up to a total of about 285 times. They have invaded other countries, bombed and killed millions of people in defiance of the Security Council, and without any consideration of the Council’s repeated resolutions and appeals. Superficial observers have concluded that the UN has failed in its main objectives. In reality, it has been the national governments that have failed to comply with the rules of peacekeeping.

But if this is the situation, what hope is there that the UN can prevent new conflicts or intervene when they arise?

It all depends almost exclusively on the countries involved in the conflict. If none of the five permanent member states of the Security Council vetoes the move, the Council itself, by simple majority decision, can send its multilateral armed forces, popularly called “blue helmets,” to try to stop a conflict. This has happened several times, even in complex situations. In some cases, the blue helmets had ensured a measure of peace in recent years: for example, in Cambodia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, El Salvador, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and East Timor. In 2022, the General Assembly decided for the first time to meet automatically within 10 days for deliberations whenever veto power is used in the Security Council during a conflict. In this way, the General Assembly has recovered and promised to use its global peacekeeping mandate. Noting that all member states gave the Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and agreed that it should act on their behalf, the General Assembly emphasized that the veto power entails the responsibility to work to achieve the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. Members as a whole should be given a voice when the Security Council is unable to act in accordance with the functions and powers of this Assembly reflected in the Charter, particularly Article 10. This specifies that the Assembly may discuss any question or matter within the scope of the Charter or the powers and functions of any body provided for within it, and may make recommendations to the member states of the United Nations or the Security Council, or both, on such questions or issues.

What happened in the case of the invasion of Ukraine?

When the General Assembly on March 2022 condemned, by 143 votes to five, the invasion and the attempted annexation of the territories of Ukraine, Russia paid no attention. A similar attitude had already been seen after other invasions deemed illegal under international law. That vote, too, is proof that the United Nations could be a strong guarantee for peace if it was always the General Assembly, or the International Court, that decided, and not the five countries with the Security Council veto.

An International Criminal Court, independent of the United Nations but linked to the Security Council, was established in 2002 to try serious crimes against peace, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The United States, China and Russia do not recognize the findings of this court. By mid-2023, 31 cases have been tried.

How well-founded is the criticism leveled at the United Nations, that their budgets are too expensive when measured by the results?

Certainly this is widespread criticism, even among governments who know full well how completely unfounded it is. In 2023, the total UN budget, unanimously approved by member countries, is USD 3.2 billion. So we are talking about less than a third of the annual budget of the NYPD ($10.8 billion in 2023). In the humanitarian sector, USD 51.5 billion will be needed in 2023, but the average contribution achieved in previous years has been less than half. For peacekeeping, USD 6.45 billion will be needed to fund the 10 current missions, excluding the new crisis in Ukraine, where the United Nations is only present with humanitarian aid. The “big four” multidimensional missions – MINUSMA (Mali), UNMISS (South Sudan), MINUSCA (Central African Republic) and MONUSCO (Democratic Republic of Congo) – account for nearly 70 percent of the allocation. The total UN peacekeeping budget accounts for just over 0.3 percent of annual global military spending.

There has long been talk of reforming both the UN Charter and the organization itself. Where does the question of reform stand?

The desire for a profound reform of the Charter and the organization itself is almost as old as the United Nations. As early as 1963, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris, St. John XXIII called for the UN to respond to planetary challenges, judging the existing arrangement then, 20 years after its creation, to be wholly inadequate. In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi, on behalf of the Soviet Union and India (together one-fifth of humanity), in their New Delhi Declaration, called for a total reversal of the politics of domination and war and proposed 10 shared principles for building a nuclearweapon-free, nonviolent world in which human life would be considered the supreme value and every nation had equal dignity and responsibility for the care of creation.

In this sense we also hear clearly the voices of successive popes…

The same wishes, coupled with a strong call for a reform of the United Nations, were repeatedly reiterated by St. John Paul II, who in 2004 called for a refounding of the international order, by Benedict XVI in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, and by Francis in Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.

Despite many good intentions, the willingness for reform on the part of member countries seems to me to be the subject of much discussion currently, but little little achieved in creating a real consensus. Do you agree?

Most of the decision-making power concerning world peace and security is still in the hands of the five permanent members of the Security Council, who were given veto power in 1945, probably as a transitional measure. The creation of alternative liaison and consultation groups to the UN, such as the G7, the G20, the Group of 77 and others, can in no way make up for that fundamental lack of democracy at the UN’s highest level. Several groups of countries have initiated consultations to seek consensus on what reforms should be made. The United States, the UN’s largest contributor and the world’s largest economy, has repeatedly tried to force through reforms desired by its government, suspending its mandatory contribution or threatening to leave the UN and its specialized agencies. During the recent pandemic, President Trump even proposed leaving the World Health Organization and founding an American-led one. In addition, the United States is the country that has ratified the fewest number of international treaties, particularly those related to human rights. As Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the UN, said in 1961, “The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to keep it from falling into hell.”

Member countries could possibly start again from a unanimous consensus at least on the essentials of humanity’s survival…

Secretary-General António Guterres proposed a systemic process of reform in 2017, which member countries have been continuing to discuss for six years. Some of the proposed reforms in particular are very significant and, if passed, would enable a big improvement in peacekeeping. Security Council reform, taking the maintenance of peace back into the hands of the Assembly is the most urgent reform. An important knot to unravel is the West’s stubborn sense of superiority. Indeed, the current composition of the Council no longer reflects global geopolitical realities. The Western European and Other States Group (WEOG) now represents three of the five permanent members (France, the United Kingdom and the United States). This leaves only one permanent seat for the Eastern European Group (Russia), one for the Asia-Pacific Group (China), and none for Africa or Latin America. The rotation of seats in the Security Council does not adequately restore the regional balance. Even with two of the 10 rotating seats on the Security Council, the Asia-Pacific region is still massively underrepresented. It accounts for about 55 percent of the world’s population and 44 percent of the world’s GDP, but has only 20 percent (three out of 15) of the seats on the Security Council.

In the intergovernmental negotiations for reform, Italy plays an important role as the Focal Point of the Uniting for Consensus Group, which is a significant group of countries, geographically spread across the world, united by certain common beliefs.

Should the vital importance of the interdependence of peoples in terms of prosperity and security be reaffirmed in order to reach a consensus on some form of multilateral governance of humanity?

Changing the analytical and explanatory paradigm for the UN would provide adequate means to prevent wars and build positive peace, as suggested by the European Parliament, which has developed an articulate proposal to reform the United Nations. To defend the weakest, the system of world regulation must first be respected without exception and then modified where deemed ineffective. In a nutshell, any possible reform will probably have to maintain a connection between the goals of worldwide good governance and the national interests of rich and developing countries for decades to come. The manner in which member countries have blocked multilateralism and UN reforms has caused a crippling stalemate and a devastating vicious cycle. Every “no” to one peace governance reform has caused another “no” in another area of world governance, which has caused the conditions for new wars.

Beyond a degree of apathy in international relations, can we still hope to find a consensus to a better United Nations?

As for the prevention of war, as the subtitle of Pacem in Terris succinctly defined it, it really must be re-founded on truth, justice, solidarity and freedom, and not on the special interests of the best-armed countries. In practice, this also means a new vision for the whole multilateral system of governance of the global commons, inspired by the four principles mentioned previously. That is why I am deeply convinced that the most urgent and effective reform would be to make the management of decisions ratified by the UN General Assembly as independent from governments as possible, by creating an “Autonomous Fund for Humanity,” with which, after consensus, member governments cannot interfere. It would be a sharing mechanism similar to the one adopted by six countries in 1951, at the beginning of the European Common Market, with the creation of the Economic Coal and Steel Community.

How could this global autonomous fund be realized?

With a micro-tax on stock market transactions worldwide, or with a human citizenship micro-tax, extending to multinational corporations as well, as examples. The Global Pandemic Fund, created in 2022, operates in this way, with funding of at least $15 billion a year. The American economist Jeffrey Sachs has proposed another simple solution to the UN’s financial problems, involving an appropriate increase in funding high-income countries would contribute at least $40 per capita per year, upper-middle-income countries would give eight, lower-middle-income countries two, and low-income countries one per capita per year. With these contributions – which would amount to about 0.1 percent of the average per capita income of member countries – the UN would get about $75 billion a year with which to strengthen the quality and scope of vital programs, particularly peace and development programs. If, instead, the funding remains always and only in the hands of member states, multilateralism’s efforts for freedom, truth, global justice, solidarity and respect for the rights of all will too often remain held back by crippling conditions.

What, in your opinion, would be the first step to legitimate the multilateral exercise of power?

I think it would be to address four main issues in the governance of the global commons. Basically, any government, shown to be overbearing and uncooperative, should cede some sovereignty over the care and responsibility for the global commons, giving more trust and autonomy to international organizations. The most important global commons include financial systems, health, peace and the environment. According to UN studies on efficacious multilateralism, four major challenges have emerged regarding these global commons, causing the systemic crisis in which humanity finds itself today.¹ These challenges can be described as gaps in jurisdiction, participation, incentives and
truthful information.

In what sense are you talking about a jurisdictional vacuum?

The jurisdiction gap arises because states are not responsible for a range of issues that extend beyond their territorial boundaries. Although there are some limited obligations, for example, not polluting shared water sources, there is no international law governing the global effects of states’ autonomous decisions. As a result, most global commons either have no binding global rules (e.g., the Paris Treaty), are not fully global (e.g., NATO’s Collective Security Agreements) or are selectively and unevenly applied (e.g., the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty).

You have also talked about participation gaps and incentives….

The participation gap stems from the fact that international relations remain dominated by states, despite the growing role of non-government actors, such as civil society and business, and the clear shift toward multinational corporations as influential players around the world, leaving less and less decision-making space for civil society. The incentive gap in the international sphere and highly competitive relations between states lead to information problems, nationalist protective measures, and ultimately suboptimal decisions for all. For example, it is clear that we would all be better off in the long run if we switched to clean energy, but developing countries, in particular, see an unfair short-term loss if they are forced to abandon the cheapest form of energy after others have developed their economies without such constraints. This leads some countries to claim a different responsibility for decarbonization under international law. Similarly, the effective distribution of global commons is inhibited by the free ride issue. If everyone benefits from the decarbonization of some large economies, the incentive for others to decarbonize will be reduced. The free ride problem is particularly acute in issues that require large-scale changes by many countries, such as the transition to clean energy, but it is also prevalent in the areas of finance, health, and investment in global security arrangements.

What do you mean by lack of truthful information in global governance of the commons?

This is a problem of uncertainty. In a world of perfect information flows, the value of the global commons would be clear: everyone would benefit from more peaceful coexistence in the long run, and humanity would almost certainly be better off if global warming were limited. But our information about these benefits – and particularly about the causal chain between the actions we take now and long-term improvements – is not well known and poorly distributed. Uncertainty and incomplete knowledge are the factors that make it difficult to generate concerted action for the goal envisaged. Those in power have a strong incentive to limit widespread knowledge.

Are there known principles of multilateralism reform inherent in the global commons that could be put into practice? What do you propose?

One could initiate the creation of a World Parliament associated with the Assembly of of the United Nations, to be entrusted with the responsibility of generating a consensus truly shared by all humanity, with the goal of reaching a “Constitution of Humanity” by 2045, the centennial of the United Nations Charter. Indeed, given its definition – global instead of international – this should concern all human beings, before states. Moreover, there should not be a distinction between present and future generations. It should be global across time and space, taking into account the benefits and risks of today’s actions for people everywhere and at all times. This is the principle of universality. Since everyone is entitled, everyone should be consulted and involved. This is the principle of inclusiveness.

Universality and inclusion are inherent in the principle of equity. This can be described in terms of access. Everyone has the same rights to access the light emanating from a lighthouse, and all people would benefit from polio eradication. But it can also be described in terms of rights: all people have the right to breathable air, while small island states may view sea level rises as a violation of their right to exist. In this sense, the good stewardship and management of the global commons requires an equitable distribution of resources and an equitable allocation of rights, which in some cases demands precise regulations that are shared and respected by all, a paradigm that only a world parliament could set in motion.

This view seems to me to go against the well-known “e pluribus unum” principle, which would instead prefigure the United Nations as a global government…

The world has changed from 80 years ago, and new challenges cannot be met by governments alone in an overly litigious and inconclusive system. It is now clear for all to see that international law itself is an under-recognized and much abused system. An obvious example is cyberspace. We all understand at once that it is potentially a positive for everyone, with boundless, borderless potential. But different national jurisdictions regulate it differently, and in the absence of a global law and jurisdiction, any abuse, even serious and to the detriment of millions of people, becomes unpunishable.

One of the most important potential roles for the reformed United Nations would be to help consolidate scientific, political and social consensus across humanity so that every challenge affecting every human person is discussed and regulated by international law, before and above any national interest. Ex uno plures should be the new transformative principle that makes it clear that the United Nations is not and perhaps never will be a global government (E pluribus unum), but rather the space where every person sees rights respected, partly because they are committed to respecting the rights of all.

If it were to go in this direction, what do you think might be one of the feasible reform proposals?

The Trusteeship Council (UNTC, which was suspended in 1994 after the end of most colonies) could be reorganized to entrust the UN with the custody and governance of the global commons, starting with water, oceans and clean air, including the rights of future generations. The new Council on the Global Commons should also provide space for civil society and business representations. Thus, the role of the reformed United Nations should be calibrated according to its ability to seek to ensure universal, inclusive and equitable distribution of resources, creating incentives that help distribute both the risks and rewards of collective action, possibly working to compensate those leaders willing to assume the risks of early action.

Would a systemic and effective vision of global justice, sustainable development, peace and the remedy of causes of war, require a revision of the concept of national and international power around the world?

A facilitating condition of this transformation of peoples’ cooperation would be the reinvention of all political power as a generative instrument of cooperation. The goods humanity needs for its peaceful coexistence require us not to think of power as something exercised “over” people and resources, the kind of hegemonic control advocated by thinkers such as Hobbes and Weber. Instead, we may need to reconceive power as “in” or “with” something or someone, arising through cooperation. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009, has shown that people have an extraordinary capacity to create shared institutions and rules for the equitable management of resources. This concept of “power with,” also supported and illustrated by political philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, suggests that cooperation itself – inherent in multilateralism – is the most important factor for building the foundations of lasting peace. This view is shared by a significant majority of governments and informed people throughout the world, but it still struggles to manifest itself and be understood by the public and to find leaders willing to present it and make it understood by peoples and new generations.

Does it therefore seem to you that it is impossible to give solutions to the current worldwide problems without placing them in the perspective of the world community?

Problems on the issue of peace and other global issues cannot go on much longer: it will take a paradigm shift in the minds of peoples that would be possible with the tools offered by a reformed United Nations. There is no other alternative. As Fr. Ernesto Balducci predicted, any solution given to the new worldwide problems that is not referred to the world community would appear ephemeral and pernicious. The impossibility of giving practical shape to a world community is not a sufficient reason to allow oneself to be invaded by doubt.

Can the history of the human species teach us anything about this?

The lesson from the history of our species is that when confronted with extreme dilemmas – and by now the dilemma is between life and death – it is capable of finding unexpected creative resources. Necessity must needs resort to novelty. It is not surprising that, since our species’ birth there have been intermediate steps overshadowed by darkness. As Ernst Bloch wrote, quoting a Chinese proverb, “at the foot of the lighthouse there is no light.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32009/22072446.0723.13

1 . Cf. https://www.highleveladvisoryboard.org/breakthrough/