Mobilising for the next quarter-century

LUCKILY, GIVEN the pandemic, the UN did not plan a boastful birthday. Instead, it decided to ask what the world thinks. It has launched an effort to to gather views from everywhere, in the spirit of the opening words of its charter, “We the peoples”.

With the help of a mass online survey, in-depth polling across 50 countries, hundreds of live “dialogues” and a trawl of research, the plan is to find out what people would like to see 25 years from now, when the UN reaches 100. The views of young people are a special focus. Half the world’s population is under 30, points out Jayathma Wickramanayake, the secretary-general’s youth envoy, yet they have little say in how it is run.

The aim of UN75 is “to give a vitamin shot to what at times feels like quite a fatigued enterprise and come up with new ideas,” says Fabrizio Hochschild, the official in charge. The results will be presented to the General Assembly in September. Preliminary findings released in April suggest the world thinks pretty much what the UN was hoping. The priorities were environmental protection, human rights, less conflict, equal access to basic services and zero discrimination. Fully 95% of survey respondents thought international co-operation was “essential” or “very important” (the number ticked up as covid-19 took hold). As for how co-operation might...

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