The John W. Holmes lecture: growing the 'Third UN' for people-centered development--the United Nations, civil society, and beyond.
Global Governance › Vol. 15 Nbr. 2, April 2009
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The John W. Holmes lecture: growing the 'Third UN' for people-centered development--the United Nations, civil society, and beyond.
Three decades ago John Holmes argued that the need for having the kind of "international organizations in which to tackle the inescapably complex economic and social issues in an interdependent world need not be restated." Despite these words, ten years later, when Donald Puchala and I presented the first "State of the United Nations Report" to the second annual meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), we found an organizational system teetering and tottering on the verge of crisis. (1) There was a void of leadership, as well as a crisis of capacity precipitated largely by the refusal of the United States to fulfill its legal obligation to fund UN agencies; and staff morale was at a historic low. One of the main themes that we explored in that report was the challenge to the UN system--as intergovernmental institutions--of dealing with the plethora of global problems that confront the world and dominate the global agenda and that cannot be solved by governmental or intergovernmental means alone. Now, after twenty more years, the illusive quest continues for new avenues and directions for making global governance more effective for promoting sustainable human security and development.
In this context, this article explores the current state of the debate over United Nations-civil society/private sector relations and why this relationship is critical to the future of the UN system and its success in dealing with the nexus of complex issues that crowd the global agenda. (2) But one cannot understand the nature and implications of this debate without understanding its history and exploring the various assumptions, logic, worldviews, and intellectual and practical biases that underpin the positions within it. The UN in Holmesian Perspective The story begins with John Holmes, in whose honor this essay is being written. In his article examining US-UN relations, "A Non-American Perspective," (3) Holmes argued that it was because the UN was founded on "permanent reality rather than legal fictions" that the system has survived and grown. Understanding the nature of the meanings of that reality and the inherent contradictions and tensions encompassed within them is critical for understanding ...See the full content of this document
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