Aspen Strategy Group

The Indispensible Institution: Restoring Faith in International Organizations (June 2011)

As part of the recent Aspen Ministers Forum in The Hague, the group spent time assessing the mission, role, and current capabilities of international organizations to address the peace, security, and democracy challenges in North Africa and the Middle East. Of particular concern was the ongoing violence in Syria and the possibility of using new tools to stop the bloodshed. As a culmination of this meeting, the Ministers jointly wrote an op-ed on that was recently published in the Financial Times. The idea of using the International Criminal Court to launch an investigation into the events in Syria was conceived within the context of our discussions on confidence in and the capabilities of international institutions today.
The 19 former Foreign Ministers who participated in this effort are:

Madeleine Albright (USA), Jozias van Aartsen (Netherlands), Halldór Ásgrímsson (Iceland), Lloyd Axworthy (Canada), Lamberto Dini (Italy), Alexander Downer (Australia), Jan Eliasson (Sweden), Joschka Fischer (Germany), Rosario Green (Mexico), Igor Ivanov (Russia), Donald McKinnon (New Zealand), Marwan Muasher (Jordan), Ana Palacio (Spain), Niels Helveg Petersen (Denmark), Surin Pitsuwan (Thailand), Lydie Polfer (Luxembourg), Malcolm Rifkind (United Kingdom), Jaswant Singh (India), and Knut Vollebaek (Norway). You can read the op-ed on Syria from the group here and a piece by Lloyd Axworthy here.

More information about our ongoing efforts below.

The twelfth meeting of the Aspen Ministers Forum convened in The Hague, The Netherlands, gathering 19 former Foreign Ministers and 20 expert participants for the purpose of assessing the fitness of international organizations to address contemporary challenges and identifying the way forward in improving their accountability, transparency, and legitimacy.

The meeting began with a historical examination of the rise of international organizations, which followed two debilitating world wars that necessitated institutionalized international cooperation.

Subsequently, the meeting shifted focus to the 21st century, whose developments relating to globalization, the emergence of new powers and non-state actors, and proliferation of transnational conflicts and challenges have placed a greater burden on international organizations.

Several critical questions were raised: should the UN and the World Bank be reformed to better reflect the modern international landscape? Can international organizations serve states' interests as a tool of foreign policy? What is the role of international organizations in carrying out the Responsibility to Protect? How do these organizations compare to alternative mechanisms for international cooperation, namely informal governance structures such as the G-20 and public-private partnerships?

The AMF also coincided with the launch of The Hague Institute for Global Justice (THIGJ), a newly established institute dedicated to promoting knowledge of law and justice as the basis of and in relationship to peace, security, and social and economic development. You can find out more about the THIGJ here.