What are global negotiations?

The global rules and institutions created after the Second World War were supposed to bring us closer to a more equitable world. But multilateral democracy continues to be thwarted by bilateral, nationalist policies that undermine the purposes of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The world still lacks an ongoing dialogue by a diverse group of representatives from developed and developing nations linking the world’s interdependent issues – hunger, poverty, disease, development, women’s rights, trade, money, finance, environment, energy security and human security – into a new framework for global economic decision-making and institutional coordination. As Willy Brandt proposed in the second report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues (Common Crisis, 1983), we need a multilateral process for “discussing the entire range of North-South issues among all the nations, with the support and collaboration of the relevant international agencies. The aim of ‘global negotiations’ is international consensus. This means that no single problem, energy or debt or food, for example, would be viewed in isolation without considering its direct implications on the full global agenda of interconnected issues.”