The participants to the Graduate Study Programme of the United Nations Office at Geneva’s (UNOG) joined those of the Graduate Institute’s Summer Programme on International Affairs and Global Governance last week in an evening event entitled The UN We Want. The organisers of both programmes took advantage of the concurrent presence in Geneva of these 150 young people coming from all over the world to openly debate, symbolically outside the UN walls, what type of United Nations they aspire to have.

To ensure a wide representation of views a panel comprising a representative from a UN Member State and an NGO, a young graduate and a representative of academia presented their personal views on the controversial subject.

Andrea Aeby, Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Switzerland to UNOG, said “the UN we want is innovative, efficient and more transparent. We need more synergies and more shared visions. We need to encourage partnership, to connect knowledge and to build platforms that can gather the different institutions and people together across different sectors”.

Peter Splinter, Representative to the United Nations, Amnesty International, spoke about his experience working in human rights at the UN, saying "we need to strengthen the UN as a place where innovative solutions to global problems can be found. Too much time is spent talking at one another, rather than talking with one another. We need to have difficult conversations about difficult issues. Perhaps then we would see more innovative solutions to some of the problems”.

Liza Rubach, a young graduate of the Institute, currently Associate Humanitarian Affairs Officer, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that “the UN we want depends on who we are, whether we are academia, an NGO or a government. As a recent student, the UN that we want is transparent and has a competitive recruitment process that we understand, so can eventually work for the organisation and one day make the world a better place".

Cecilia Cannon, Researcher and Coordinator at the Graduate Institute’s Programme for the Study of International Governance, representing academia, said “there are six aspects of institutional design that can help us think about UN reform: the mandate of the organisation, managing an ever-diverse membership composition, exploring alternative funding sources, scrutinising the operational structure, assessing the different decision-making processes within each UN agency, and formal engagement with non-state actors. Non-state actors often play an important role in debating and defining issues, and in proposing innovative solutions. They play a crucial role in monitoring compliance with, and enforcing international agreements, working with their local networks around the world. Ultimately, if the UN is to be effective, its Member States must continue to actively engage with the UN system to collaboratively address today's global challenges, rather than turn elsewhere”.

The roundtable discussion’s moderator Ahmad Fawzi, Director a.i, UN Information Service in Geneva, expertly handled the dozens of questions from the participants and concluded “there are many political reasons why UN Member States themselves do not want to change the UN’s structure. We can't live without the UN, but we can't live with it in its current stalemate on a few political issues… but what the UN does is much more than these few political issues”.