Paper details
| Paper authors | Cristina Churruca Muguruza |
| In panel on | Tackling Inhumanity |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
The inability of the international community to act in the case of Syria, the US withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council and unilateral European responses to asylum seekers, refugees and survival migrants are symptomatic of a broader rejection of multilateralism. It can be considered that multilateralism is in crisis or even in retreat. There is indeed a crisis of a specific form a selective state centred multilateralism. But it can be also claimed that multilateralism is evolving and changing and that we are witnessing a “new multilateralism” in which civil society can make its voice heard. Multilateralism as the instrument of international cooperation in the economic and development spheres is now being extended to new areas like climate change, migration, and humanitarian action and doing it in a way which expresses changes in the international system (the diffusion of power, the emergence of new actors…). The adoption of the Agenda 2030, the Paris climate change agreement, the World Humanitarian Summit, and the preparations for the Global Compact on Refugees and Migrants with all its critics and limitations see the emergence of a new conception of multilateralism based on the establishment of international normative frameworks that encourage states to act responsibly and ask for the mobilization of the whole society (civil society, academia, business). This paper will address current changes in multilateralism and the opportunities that emerged for humanitarian actors to collaborate with other actors of the international system to put the protection agenda at the centre of world politics.
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