GPPi contributes to international conference on global governance

GPPi co-founder and associate director Thorsten Benner participated in a conference on international governance that took place in Waterloo, Canada, from October 28 – 30. Organized by The Centre for International Governance Innovation, the conference was called ​“An Unfinished House – Filling the Gaps in International Governance”.

The conference brought together international experts and policymakers ahead of the G‑20 meeting in Cannes from November 3 – 4. Among others, participants included William Burke-White (deputy dean at the University of Pennsylvania Law School), Mark Malloch-Brown (chairman of Europe, Middle East and Africa at FTI Consulting) and Ernesto Zedillo (former president of Mexico and director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization). Download a PDF of the program here.

Benner contributed to the panel on global security. In his remarks, he focused on the need for dialogue about the implementation of the contested global norm known as the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P. Almost 10 years after a report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the R2P norm has received a lot of attention in 2011, in particular with respect to Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Syria. The increasingly acrimonious discussions after the Libya resolution and intervention demonstrate the need for sustained dialogue on the R2P between all major powers. The UN Security Council alone, as long as it remains in its present composition, is unable to consistently offer a forum for such discussions. Therefore the major powers represented in the G‑20 need to provide a forum that can focus on the meaning of the R2P norm.

During his stay in Waterloo, Benner also gave a presentation on October 28 at the Balsillie School of International Affairs titled Turning the UN Bureaucracy into a Learning Organization: Mission Impossible.