International governance failures result in existential risks---addressing global inequality is a prerequisite to solving.

A series of policy papers published by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung's European Union and Washington, DC offices that gives voice to civil society experts from countries with developing economies and the most vulnerable people and communities suggests the answer is a worrisome no. From trade to climate finance to digital governance – and the human rights, equality, and equity breakdowns that run through all of those global issues – the authors paint a troubling picture. They argue that the world’s richest nations have not only sidelined their poorer counterparts and profited from their resources with little return, but that they have failed to deliver on repeated pledges to remedy even their acknowledged wrongs and shortcomings, whether at home or abroad. At the same time, poorer countries have often been caught in the vice of geopolitical and geo-economic competition.

The result is growing frustration, even outrage, among ordinary citizens over the mounting injustices and cascading calamities of the pandemic. The spread of Covid-19 quickly disrupted global supply chains and bred labor rights violations as economies grew to rely even more heavily on the service sector, with delivery services, for example. The pandemic also has increased everyone’s exposure to a monopolistic, Big Tech-led economy with all its negative consequences for societies and individuals, such as rampant disinformation on social media and privacy violations even in Covid-tracing efforts. Climate change and the difficulties of rescue efforts amid pandemic precautions exacerbated the impacts of an array of natural disasters and extreme weather.

A crescendo of mutually reinforcing crises seems to be building the world over. These unprecedented catastrophes are being met by unprecedented mass protests – over pandemic-inflamed economic hardships and inequality in Colombia, Georgia, Lebanon, and most recently Cuba, for example. The latest Global Peace Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace reported in June that civil unrest rose 10 percent across the globe in 2020, to a count of 14,871 violent demonstrations, protests, and riots.

These trends show that not only are national governments not coping, but the international systems established to serve as backup solution-generators seem broken. And when these mechanisms – the G7, for example – are limited to the richest nations, they risk making earth-rocking decisions in an undemocratic and exclusionary vacuum. The undercurrent in many – if not all – of these developments is the cold brutality of persistent and structural inequality.

The 20 authors of the 15 papers in this series illuminate the depth of the problems in the three specific fields of international trade, digital governance, and climate finance, with special attention to human rights and gender equality. The researchers illustrate the profound failures of national governments and international mechanisms, and often reflect the frustrations of populations or countries that feel the rich and powerful are running roughshod over the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable for their own outsized benefit, and are doing so with impunity. The “rules” in the rules-based international order, often touted as the basis of what global peace, shared prosperity, and stability remains or can be recovered, too often are manipulated to the detriment of those who lack bargaining power and thus don’t have the agency and voice – as countries, communities, or individuals – to push back.

Far from just deploring the failing and shortcomings, the authors in this series – scholars, human rights defenders, lawyers, economists, feminists, and combinations thereof – also offer solutions. Some are admittedly ambitious, asking for no less than bold systemic change. Emilia Reyes, a program director at the feminist NGO Equidad de Género in Mexico, says the way forward “would combine rejuvenation of the United Nations system, cancellation of debt, a focus on tax justice, reform of the financial sector, and elimination of extraterritoriality that shields public and private actors from accountability for human rights violations and environmental degradation.” Any viable emergence from the Covid-19 pandemic “puts addressing climate change at its core and grounds all actions in human rights and gender equality,” says feminist economist Mariama Williams. Harjeet Singh and Indrajit Bose call for the international community to “focus on ‘climate-proofing’ development projects, frameworks, and systems; respect and protect human rights; encourage participation; and account for the disproportionate effects of climate change on women and girls.” Journalist and researcher Kim Arora says, “The countries involved must look beyond immediate geo-political or economic gains, to build a secure and enduring legacy in an increasingly interconnected and fragile world.”

High standards, perhaps, but the authors make clear that the degree and depth of today’s global challenges demands such sweeping and revolutionary solutions. In meetings from the recent G7 summit to preparations for the annual convening of the U.N. General Assembly in September, and the U.N. climate talks, COP 26, in November in Glasgow, Scotland, multilateral mechanisms are struggling to address the range and extent of risks and do so with the urgency needed. While the United States is finally re-engaging constructively and the European Union is working on legislation to implement the European Green Deal that it introduced in late 2019 with the goal of making the EU climate neutral by 2050, more action is needed and more quickly. That includes adequate climate finance, fair trade in goods and digital services, and a global economic and financial system that promotes and protects diversity, human rights, and gender equality.

The authors in our series call for the wealthiest countries to acknowledge responsibility for the world’s existential threats, and take urgent action to address the consequences and reduce future risks. These experts outline solutions and provide useful models, especially from the Global South. Besma Soudani Belhaj and Najla Abbes, co-founders of the League of Tunisian Women Voters, cite, for example, the 2017 Organic Law Related to the Elimination of Violence against Women that made their country the first in the Arab world “to incorporate into its laws the notion of political violence based on gender, one of 19 countries that have criminalized this form of violence.” Researcher Arina Muresan of the Institute for Global Dialogue and policy analyst Sanusha Naidu offer the example of South Africa’s leadership in pushing in the past for accessibility of HIV/AIDS medicines and more recently for “rights-based initiatives to pursue more licensing agreements for domestic industries to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine.”

The research and thinking by this distinguished group of authors provides an essential reference point for the kinds of sweeping global efforts that will be needed to exit the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, reduce the destructive effects of climate change, and establish rights-respecting global systems that truly work for people and planet.