Implications of the UN Common Agenda for Australia: Renewing Multilateralism

Abstract

In flagrant violation of international law, Russia has invaded Ukraine. It invokes a right to intervene on humanitarian and security grounds despite the necessary pre-conditions, including UN Security Council endorsement, being absent. In Myanmar, the February 2021 military coup has ushered in a new era of serious repression of citizens, violent conflict and human rights violations. ASEAN’s 2021 five-point consensus to end the violence and promote conciliation has been largely ignored. These are but two of a number of current global threats which defy unilateral resolution and demand multilateral responses. Others are the looming disasters provoked by climate change; the ongoing Covid pandemic; conflict and the threat of conflict from Syria and Yemen to the South China Sea; the return of repressive Taliban rule in Afghanistan; ferocious civil war in Ethiopia; historically high refugee displacement; and mass migratory movements. At a time when ‘the only certainty is more uncertainty’, countries must unite to forge a new, more hopeful and equal path, UN Secretary-General António Guterres (SG) told the General Assembly on 21 January 2022. In laying out his priorities for 2022, he observed, “We face a five-alarm global fire that requires the full mobilisation of all countries”, – the raging COVID-19 pandemic, a morally bankrupt global financial system, the climate crisis, lawlessness in cyberspace, and diminished peace and security. He stressed that countries must go into emergency mode. Leadership to guide such adaptation to these complex challenges is found in an uncharacteristically hard-hitting report, Our Common Agenda, released in September 2021 by the SG and adopted by consensus in the UN General Assembly, on 16 November 2021. It rests on a belief in the absolute criticality, now, of improving the way countries cooperate to manage the world’s common resources (oceans, land masses and space) and public goods like global health and peaceful security to safeguard the planet and its resources for future generations. Our Common Agenda aims to spur a renewed multilateral system built on a ‘UN 2.0’ able to offer ‘system-wide solutions to 21st century challenges’. The Agenda contains recommendations which address a multiplicity of issues, from the high-profile like climate change and loss of biodiversity, peace and disarmament, to the more micro-issues like coordination to reduce international tax evasion. New pathways to reaching the sustainable development goals adopted by the UN are a