Multilateralism / Comment
The UN world summit: a necessary wager
07/10/2005 By James Hathaway
Over 150 heads of state and government gathered at the 2005 World Summit to adopt a wide-ranging, 35-page document that addresses contemporary challenges to development, peace and security, human rights and the institutional architecture of the United Nations.
The “outcome document” of the summit, adopted by the General Assembly on 13 September, and by over 150 heads of state and government on 16 September, addresses terrorism, responses to gross violations of human rights, trade, peacebuilding, debt relief, democracy, management reform, and a host of other issues.
Although the summit made noteworthy progress in a number of areas, it did not overcome the divisions that gave urgency to the need for reform.
Yet the UN had little choice but to identify and confront its new challenges and divisions, if only to identify the normative way ahead.
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Keywords
Peace Terrorism UNBio author: James Hathaway
J.S.D. and LL.M. at Columbia University, and an LL.B. (Honours) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. A leading authority on international refugee law, James C. Hathaway is James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law; Director of the Refugee and Asylum Law Programme at the University of Michigan; and Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Programme. Professor Hathaway established and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (www.refugeecaselaw.org), and is an editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports. His main areas of research are Human Rights, International and Comparative Law, Public Interest Law, and Refugee and Asylum Law.
