The MILE Project emerged in response to genuine concerns over the future of international cooperation, the uncertain trajectory of international Geneva, and the pressing need to address the asymmetries and inequalities perpetuated by the multilateral system.
Rather than recounting a narrative of failure or decline, this project examines the current state of multilateral efforts in global health and global youth participation to identify opportunities for more inclusive, legitimate, and resilient global governance.
From the vantage point of International Geneva, we explore how disparities in resources, epistemic authority, and agenda-setting persist despite repeated commitments to reform and repair the system, including through the redistribution of influence to historically overlooked or disregarded populations. Hosted at the Global Health Centre, the project studies these questions primarily through the governance of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) as well as global youth movements.
NTDs affect over 1 billion people globally and offer a lens into how global health priorities are defined, whose knowledge and expertise are recognised, and whether affected communities have meaningful influence over decisions pertaining to their own lives. NTD governance also raises questions about the ability of voluntary commitments to deliver sustained results when political attention and funding are uneven and uncertain. It further invites us to consider the mechanisms in which exclusion plays out and how epistemic authority as well as accountability are negotiated between international institutions, experts and affected populations.
Global youth movements offer a complementary means of taking the current political temperature, especially as those under the age of 25 comprise 40 percent of the global population. Often operating outside formal structures, these movements reveal tensions within multilateralism, including demands for participation without institutional affiliation. The growing visibility of youth movements also point to a potential paradox: how does visibility translate into actual influence over global governance? Youth movements therefore bring questions of inclusion, exclusion, and legitimacy in global governance into clear focus, especially in large parts of the world where youth are a demographic majority and a major stakeholder in the construction of the political, economic, and environmental future.
Both NTDs and global youth movements raise questions about who gets to define global problems, whose claims are heard, and how authority is distributed within multilateral systems. Exploring them together allows us to ask whether expanding participation can challenge existing hierarchies of knowledge and power, and under what conditions different forms of inclusion can translate into more legitimate, accountable, and effective cooperation. Ultimately, through these fields of inquiry, the project seeks to contribute to shaping the future role of International Geneva, not merely as a venue for multilateral diplomacy, but as an actor in strengthening the multilateral system as it evolves.
