Though possessing much economic strength, the Kansas City region faces stark barriers to its long term competitiveness, including a limited capacity for innovation, unfocused growth, and wide racial disparities. This paper—in conjunction with two companion papers delving into the region's economic assets and its life sciences economy—examines how Kansas City can overcome these challenges.

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While Israeli and Palestinian interests are best served by a negotiated two-state state solution, the peace plan that Sam Bahour proposed in his February post disregards Israel's demographic and security concerns and is tantamount to a Palestinian veto on a negotiated solution. His insistence on the right of return for Palestinian refugees and rejection of security limitations on Palestinian sovereignty in effect asks Israel to become a binational state while creating a militarized Palestinian state alongside it. Bahour rejects the notion of unilateral action, but his case only reinforces my belief that Israel may need to act independently to protect its interests.

The logic behind the Clinton parameters and President Obama’s peace plan was that in return for the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian refugees would relinquish their claim to Israel; the hope was that this would allow for the "two states for two peoples" to exist side-by-side. Yet Bahour rejects compromise on the refugee issue as the forfeiture of “basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law.” Any peace agreement that both establishes a Palestinian state and recognizes the rights of millions of Palestinians to enter Israel would hasten the end of Israel's Jewish identity.

Israel's interest in the creation of a Palestinian state is also built upon the assumption that a sound agreement would improve its security rather than threaten it. To this end, Israel has called for a demilitarized Palestinian state, and this has been echoed by the United States, France, the Czech Republic, the European Union, and Australia’s Labor Party. Even Mahmoud Abbas accepted the premise of demilitarization, saying, “We don’t need planes or missiles. All we need is a strong police force.” Nevertheless, Bahour’s piece declares any limitations on the sovereignty of Palestine unacceptable. For Israel, a peace deal that grants one’s adversaries access to more deadly weaponry would be absurd.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace. His proposal not only fails to improve Israel's situation in any tangible sense, but further endangers it. Rejectionist Palestinian positions like Bahour's (and Abbas's recent dismissal of Biden's initiative) would veto the two-state solution as a means to move towards a single binational state. That is precisely why Israel may need to act independently to keep a two-state solution viable.

As the two-year anniversary of the last round of conflict in Gaza approaches, the inhumane conditions to which 1.8 million Palestinians are being subjected threaten to reach boiling point by the summer months, when the lack of access to water and electricity - available for a maximum of eight hours a day - combined with the oppressive heat and the lack of a reconstruction progress, could exacerbate frustrations, culminating in a new cycle of violence.

Despite the relative calm since the August 26, 2014 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, there have been more than 20 serious incidents that involved incursions, air raids, and missile exchanges with 23 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since December 2015.

As antagonistic verbal exchanges between Hamas and Israel continued over the past few months, scenes of rising violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem - seemingly outside the control of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) - started to further fuel people's frustration, thus adding to the volatility of the situation.

Reconstruction of Gaza

The Israeli/Palestinian question has become notorious for the international community's inaction.

Nevertheless, the reconstruction of Gaza is one area where action is not only possible but is also badly needed from both strategic and humanitarian perspectives.

The estimates for how much construction has been completed vary depending on the source, and range from about 17 percent (3,000) of the approximately 18,000 homes destroyed or severely damaged in July/August 2014 according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; to 9 percent by the World Bank, or to "nothing" by the average Gazan.

Regardless of the exact figure, the fact remains that more than 75,000 people remain displaced across Gaza as a direct result of the July/August 2014 war, a problem made worse by insufficient funding.

There are many factors to explain the slow progress. Chief among them is the continued Israeli blockade; the underlying cause of all the wars in Gaza since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005.

Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah border crossing without the presence of the PA, along with the Palestinians' inability to activate a unity government, makes the situation even worse.

However, one controversial factor that has received little attention is the UN's Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM).

The GRM is a complicated system of surveillance intended to: "a. Enable the GoP to lead the reconstruction effort; b. Enable the Gazan private sector; c. Assure donors that their investments in construction work in Gaza will be implemented without delay; d. Address Israeli security concerns related to the use of construction and other 'dual use' material" (UN, October 2014).

By attempting to be both the humanitarian and the jailer at the same time, the UN has fast become the recognizable face of the blockade.

Moral legitimacy

Two years into the reconstruction process, it is now clear that the GRM not only poses difficulties for the people of Gaza seeking to rebuild their homes - as it forces them to wait for a long time before they receive any construction materials - but also, more importantly, erodes the moral legitimacy of the role of the United Nations in Gaza.

For more than 70 years, the UN in Gaza has been associated largely with the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

While the Palestinian people have come to accept that the UN cannot resolve their problems, they still expect that it should at least attempt to take an impartial position, and on occasions adhere to its own values by acting as a witness and speaking up against the atrocities that Palestinians face.

With the GRM, the role of the UN changed. The humanitarian imperative that the UN clings to as it delivers aid in the occupied Palestinian territory is no longer neutral.

In fact, in order to facilitate the flow of construction material under the GRM, the UN is increasingly seen as favoring the status quo and siding with the one with power - Israel.

Arguably, among the four main objectives behind the establishment of the GRM, the one related to Israel's security interest seems to take precedence all the time.

Under the current arrangements, a person seeking construction materials must first go to the GRM administrator to be placed on a list. Once their name reaches the top of the list, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) must approve of the request before the distribution of any materials. The process between COGAT and the GRM can take weeks.

The sight of UN personnel in armored vehicles accompanying sacks of cement (to ensure delivery and use as proposed) incenses the population of Gaza, as they view this practice as the UN placing a higher value on the protection of construction commodities than on human life.

Complex politics of occupation

The inability of the GRM to engage the local population has alleviated tensions over the past two years. During the conception of the GRM, the civil society of Gaza did not participate in the formation of policies governing the distribution of reconstruction materials.

Only the United Nations, the Israeli government, and the PA devised the plan to rebuild Gaza. Due to their pre-determined position to deny Hamas any opportunity of engagement, the process effectively resulted in excluding citizens and civil society organizations, which was a big mistake.

Nickolay Mladenov and other senior UN officials understand well that the GRM has fallen victim to the complex politics of occupation and resistance.

It is being used every day to punish or "incentivize" Hamas and/or to frustrate any possibility of reaching an understanding between Gaza and the West Bank.

It has also provided a fig leaf to the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi which allowed him to close his borders while pursuing a doomed-to-fail securitization agenda in Sinai.

Its lack of effectiveness has also provided many donors with the excuse to not honor their pledges, thus compounding the suffering.

In short, the situation in Gaza requires immediate action. Regardless of whose fault it is that the GRM has not been able to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza, it seems appropriate for the United Nations to admit to the failure of the mechanism and even to withdraw its services.

In fact, a walkout by the UN from administering the crossing and use of construction material is not only the right thing to do morally, but might also force constructive action from Israel, EU governments, the Gulf states, and the US as well as Hamas and the PA.

Given the security concerns in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere, the international community would not stand by and allow for a complete meltdown in Gaza.

The alternative is to continue to deny the reality of the mechanism and to watch the grievances of Palestinians in Gaza reaching an unresolvable level that explodes into another violent round of conflict, worse than the last.

This piece was originally published on Al Jazeera English.

Introduction

During 2006, the United States saw a considerable upswing in the number of new mortgage defaults and foreclosure filings. By 2007, that upswing had become a tidal wave. Today, national homeownership rates are falling, while more than a million American families have already lost their homes to foreclosure. Across the country, boarded houses are appearing on once stable blocks. Some of the hardest hit communities are in older industrial cities, particularly Midwestern cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

Although most media attention has focused on the role of the federal government in stemming this crisis, states have the legal powers, financial resources, and political will to mitigate its impact. Some state governments have taken action, negotiating compacts with mortgage lenders, enacting state laws regulating mortgage lending, and creating so-called “rescue funds.” Governors such as Schwarzenegger in California, Strickland in Ohio, and Patrick in Massachusetts have taken the lead on this issue. State action so far, however, has just begun to address a still unfolding, multidimensional crisis. If the issue is to be addressed successfully and at least some of its damage mitigated, better designed, comprehensive strategies are needed.

This paper describes how state government can tackle both the immediate problems caused by the wave of mortgage foreclosures and prevent the same thing from happening again. After a short overview of the crisis and its effect on America’s towns and cities, the paper outlines options available to state government, and offers ten specific action steps, representing the most appropriate and potentially effective strategies available for coping with the varying dimensions of the problem.

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The consequences of the global financial crisis still ripple through the international system after the initial surge in global economic cooperation and governance immediately following the crisis. The ultimate effects have been that, while some elements of the international system of institutions have gotten stronger, the system as a whole is now seen as weaker, fractured, and driven more by geopolitical conflict than by institutional norms and frameworks.

The issue is how to move the global policy agenda forward in such a way that substantive progress induces institutional strengthening. The next two years offer new opportunities for creating a positive symbiosis between policy advance and systemic improvements.

I. The U.N. global agenda

The United Nations global agenda has three tracks that relate to each other and provide opportunities to pull the world together around an integrated, comprehensive strategic vision for the world’s people and strengthen the international system in the process.

The first track is the elaboration of a sustainable development agenda for each and all countries, not just developing countries, but advanced industrial economies and emerging market countries too. This effort is already well underway and will result in a summit of global leaders in September 2015 at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. This process entails a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 to be developed and affirmed by and for all countries, and which succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that culminate in 2015 and applied only to developing countries. This post-2015 goal-setting process will provide the substantive, cross-cutting, multidimensional agenda for the next 15 years. It is simultaneously a social, economic, and environmental agenda that relates goals to each other in functional terms requiring coordination among public and private sectors, ministries, civil society groups, and international institutions.

The second track is the financing for development (FFD) track, which goes well beyond reliance conceptually and practically on foreign aid or official development assistance as in the past. FFD for the SDGs includes a focus, first and foremost, on domestic sources of finance beyond government revenues. FFD is engaged in searches for innovative sources of finance, private sector mobilization of resources, creative market incentives and mechanisms, initiatives by civil society organizations, and development of entrepreneurial and small- and medium-size business opportunities that address global issues. This effort resulted in a global leaders meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July of 2015 that reached agreement on the major thrusts for mobilizing resources for the post-2015 agenda (Kharas and MacArthur (2014)).

The third track is the global climate change negotiations currently under way to achieve a global agreement on the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), which will result in a global summit in Paris in December of 2015. While these detailed negotiations on climate are a separate track, it is clear that the sustainable human development trajectories being put forward in the post-2015 agenda impact and are crucially affected by the efficacy of the climate change arrangements worked out in the UNFCCC agreements in 2015.

Whereas these three tracks operationally are going forward separately, the substantive aspects of each track affect and are affected by the content of the other two. The ultimate convergence of these three streams of activities and actions will have to occur in the beginning of 2016 at the global, regional, and national levels if the implementation phase is to be successful. A business-as-usual approach will not be satisfactory if at the global level, for example, the international institutions are unable to coordinate their work, or if at the national level ministries remain within their “silos” of sectoral expertise and responsibility.

Synergies exist between goal areas that cannot be realized without coordination across sectors and institutions, impacting goal achievement (see OECD 2014 PCD). A systemic approach is necessary at all levels to address the global challenges identified in the post-2015 agenda.

II. The G-20 summits for 2015 and 2016

A major opportunity presents itself in terms of providing impetus, momentum, and leadership for these large work streams and their convergence by linking the G-20 presidency of Turkey for 2015 with the G-20 leadership of China in 2016. Turkey and China working together in tandem within the G-20 Troika over the next two years to explain, support, and sustain the mobilization effort toward the post-2015 agenda could be a major contribution to it but also strengthen the global system of international institutions in the process. For the Turkish G-20 summit, scheduled to take place in November 2015 in Antalya, between UNGA in New York in September and the UNFCCC in Paris in December, Turkey could use part of its G-20 summit to have the leaders of the world’s largest advanced and emerging market economies explain to the world the nature, importance, and relevance of the SDGs to domestic concerns and priorities of ordinary people.

A weakness of G-20 summits thus far has been that G-20 leaders have become trapped by finance ministers’ issues and discourse and have failed to connect with their publics on larger issues of direct concern to people everywhere. The post-2015 agenda provides an opportunity for G-20 leaders to lead their people in understanding how global efforts relate to domestic conditions and why dealing only domestically with issues will not suffice to advance the human agenda where the global interface is extremely palpable. G-20 leaders, under Turkey’s leadership, could step out beyond the technical jargon of finance ministries and central banks, as important as those issues continue to be, and directly address the longer-term, fundamental conditions that affect the lives and livelihoods of all people. They would thereby strengthen their own leadership profile internally by explaining the global dimensions of domestic issues as means of creating public support for the sustainability issues in the post-2015 agenda.

Past experience with the International Development Goals (IDGs) of the 1990s and the Millennium Development Goals since the early 2000s  demonstrates that linking the goal-setting effort to the implementation phase yields powerful results by capturing the political momentum of the goal setting phase and carrying that energy forward directly into implementation efforts. If Turkey and China were to work together in 2015 and 2016, thereby bridging the goal-setting year in 2015 to the beginning of the implementation phase in 2016, they could provide the catalytic leadership and continuity that would maximize the staying power of the momentum from one phase to the next.

China, for its G-20 summit preparations in 2016, could focus on developing a road map, in concert with the other countries and international organizations and especially with the United Nations, that would explicitly keep alive the activities, groups, and initiatives manifested in the goal-setting phase into the next phase of implementation beginning in 2016. These combined efforts by Turkey and China could jump-start societies focusing on accelerating efforts to transform their societies by mobilizing policies and resources for highly related goal areas of direct benefit to their people.

The immediate effects of coordinated sequential efforts by Turkey and China in their respective G-20 years to advance the post-2015 agenda would be to strengthen the relationship between the G-20 and the United Nations on the agenda itself and to strengthen the G-20 summits by having leaders lead on issues of central concern to their people, strengthening the G-20 as a leadership forum in the process. For these results to occur, Turkey and China would need to begin to work together now to develop concordance in their individual efforts and initiate activities that would benefit greatly by beginning now and running through 2016 and beyond.

Accelerating implementation: Several initiatives could be undertaken now that would set up the dynamics for accelerated implementation in 2016 and beyond.

• National strategies for achieving the SDGs: Encourage countries to adapt and adopt the SDGs to their respective priorities and social, political, and cultural contexts through deliberate decision processes and wide societal engagement.
• The role of parliaments: Bring parliamentarians and parliaments into the goal-setting process so that they are aware of the legislative, regulatory, and budgetary implications of the post-2015 agenda.
• The role of domestic ministries: Bring finance ministers and other domestic ministries and agencies together with foreign ministers in the goal-setting year to set in motion mutually involved functional relationships and operational guidelines to enhance implementation across sectors.
• The G-20 as broker and mobilizer: The G-20 could act as a broker between the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and regional development banks and the U.N. and its agencies to assure not just coordination but more intensive interactions that would be designed to accelerate the mobilization of resources and as well as policies and private sector activities that would enhance implementation.
• The policy role of the OECD: The strong, substantive role of the OECD in G-20 summits on issues high on the G-20 agenda—such as structural reform, tax base erosion, development, environment, energy, employment, and social issues—position the OECD to continue to provide important substantive inputs to the G-20 in 2015 and 2016. The OECD would enhance the relationship of its 34 members with G-20 emerging market economies by OECD involvement in both the G-20 and the U.N. post-2015 agenda.
• Financial stability and the SDGs: Encouraged by the G-20 summits, the IMF, the Financial Stability Board, and the OECD could work together to integrate the financial regulatory reform agenda into the post-2015 U.N. process by clarifying the linkages between financial stability, regulatory reform, and incentives for long-term private investment in infrastructure (crucial to all the SDGs) and in productive activities which generate greater employment and growth.
• Multi-stakeholder participation in implementation: G-20 summits can facilitate multi-stakeholder processes for engaging civil society, labor, private sector, religious, academic, and expert communities not only in the G-20 summits, as is the current practice, but also in the post-2015 agenda and its implementation, connecting societal leaders with the SDG agenda.

III. The overarching importance of a single global agenda

If these efforts to bring together a wide cross-section of domestic and international agencies, public and private sector leaders, stakeholders, and civil society actors are to translate into actions that are meaningful to the lives and livelihoods of people, a single set of goals is essential. The lesson learned from the IDG-MDG experience was that the tendency to differentiate roles by identifying different institutions with different sets of goals was real. The United Nations had inadvertently put forward the Millennium Declaration at the September 2000 U.N. General Assembly that had “millennium targets” which were similar but not identical to the International Development Goals (IDGs). The IDGs had been developed in the mid-1990s by OECD development ministers and subsequently were endorsed by the World Bank, the IMF, the U.N. and the OECD. In fact, in 2000, for the first time ever, the heads of those four institutions signed, and the institutions themselves published, a joint report, A Better World For All: Progress towards the International Development Goals.

Despite the appearance of unity and in part because there was a lack of concordance between the Millennium Declaration Targets (MDTs) and the IDGs, there was a moment in March 2001 when it looked like there might be a decisive divergence between the U.N. and the Bretton Woods institutions, with the U.N. taking the lead on the MDTs and the World Bank and IMF taking the lead on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process (PRSPs), leaving the IDGs marginalized altogether. This potential division of labor was thwarted by a decision to reconcile the differences between the MDTs and the IDGs by forging the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which embodied the principal elements of both. The MDGs surfaced and were endorsed by the Monterrey Summit on Financing for Development in March of 2002, keeping the major global institutions on the same page with bilateral donors and the same path moving toward achieving the MDGs in 2015.

Most people who know about the MDGs think their origins began at the U.N. in the year 2000. It is an often overlooked fact that the MDGs only came forward in 2002 to bridge the potential divide between the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations. If that divide had occurred, it would have been disastrous from a goal setting-goal implementation point-of-view. This history is quite important to bring forward into public light now because it illustrates divisive dangers that currently lurk under the surface threatening unity if not squarely addressed.

From the perspective of prioritizing implementation, the truth is that multiple sets of goals blur the strategic vision, fail to communicate direction, weaken effective leadership, and encourage special pleading for differentiated interests instead focusing on the common, public interest. The U.N. has the lead role in global goal setting and has strengthened its own role in the global system in recent years. However, looking forward now to the SDG implementation phase, a danger might be that the Post-2015 agenda could be seen as the creature and captive of the United Nations, whereas it must be fully endorsed and internalized within the global system of international institutions as a whole. For that to happen, it would be necessary to move now, during the goal-setting year, to include all the relevant international and domestic actors that are crucial to the implementation phase of the post-2015 agenda.

The implications of including the post-2015 agenda in the G-20 summits in 2015 and 2016:

• It would make clear to relevant publics and actors that this set of global goals is universal, applicable to advanced countries, emerging market economies, and developing countries; it is not a “development agenda” but a “sustainability agenda,” which is broader, more strategic, and higher on the policy agenda of most countries.
• It would make clear the inextricable dynamics between domestic priorities and global goals; the SDGs are not foreign policy objectives or aid targets for development; they are domestic priorities affected by global impacts and generating global spillovers that need to be managed, not neglected.
• It would make the incorporation of finance ministers and domestic ministers with foreign ministers, along with international institutions, an imperative, rather than a utopian, ideal.
• It would make obvious the need to have a wide range of international institutions dealing with health, labor, education, women, climate, and the environment on the same page with the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions working together toward the SDGs.
• It would link the need for multi-stakeholder participation in goal setting to the goal implementation phase to mobilize support, policies, and resources but also to reveal and work on the interconnectedness of the goals themselves taken as a whole. 

Hence, the critical imperative is that there be a single narrative, a single set of goals, for all the domestic and global players to relate to, affirm, and implement. Otherwise, a fractured global order will produce lower-yield outcomes, and competition among priorities, sectors, and actors will result in poorer goal performance than would be possible with an integrated, concerted approach where all actors are working toward the same ends.

IV. Possible G-20 Actions by Turkey and China

Turkey has developed a process for the G-20 summit scheduled for November 14-15, 2015 in Antalya. Implementation, inclusion, and investment—the three “I’s”—are the overarching themes already established. The three “I’s” ties are tightly tied to the Australian G-20 outcomes—implementing action plans to achieve the incremental growth target of an additional 2 percentage points of GDP by 2018; including lower-income people in growth and lower-income countries in the global economy; and investing in infrastructure.

Each of these priorities is supportive of and compatible with the post-2015 agenda, even though they are not yet directly addressed to it. A decision by Turkey to include the post-2015 agenda in the 2015 G-20 would be easily achieved by cross-walking the SDGs over to and into the three “I’s” and vice versa. The central priority of the post-2015 agenda is, after all, “implementation.” The overarching meaning of the six elements of the post-2015 agenda (dignity, prosperity, justice, partnership, planet, and people (U.N. SG Synthesis Report December 2014)) is their impact on “inclusion.” And “investment” in infrastructure is crucial to all of the 17 SDGs.

The three pillars for Turkey’s 2015 agenda are: (i) strengthening the global recovery and lifting potential growth (the 2 percent target); (ii) enhancing resilience (financial regulatory reform]; and (iii) buttressing sustainability. Clearly, the third pillar on sustainability opens the door for the incorporation of the post-2015 agenda into the Turkey G-20, if Turkey wishes to do so. And the other two pillars fully support the sustainability agenda and are linked to it, or need to be.

For China, the post-2015 agenda presents a unique opportunity for the Chinese government to seize on a global agenda that has specific, strong, and visible links to the domestic concerns of the Chinese people. China could use the 2016 G-20 summit both to provide international leadership for global cooperation and to demonstrate the connection of global issues to domestic conditions through their impact and spillover effects. Because the post-2015 agenda is a universal agenda, by prioritizing it in its G-20 summit, China would be embracing the multiplicity of its own identity as a developing country but also as a dynamic emerging market economy that is destined to eventually play a global leadership role equivalent to advanced countries.

Furthermore, China seems intent on being a competitive nation in various spheres while at the same time being cooperative in others. The G-20 summit presidency for China in 2016 provides China with an opportunity to strengthen its role in international cooperation by being ambitious in the reach of its agenda for the G-20 in 2016, by its conduct as a member of the G-20 Troika for the next three years, and as the host government for the G-20 in 2016. By choosing to support Turkey in its consideration of incorporating the post-2015 agenda in the G-20 summit in 2015 and by China itself addressing the implementation issues in 2016, China would be reaping the demonstrably higher-yield gains generated by linking the SDG goal-setting phase in 2015 to the implementation phase in 2016.

Integrating the three tracks of SDG goal setting, financing for development, and progress on climate change actions is complementary but complex. While challenging, China has sufficiently high stakes in the outcomes of all three of these tracks to have a national interest in leading a global effort over the next three years to energize the convergence of agendas and institutional mandates necessary to generate bigger outcomes for people everywhere, including in China.

V. Results: Strengthening global governance and leadership

What follows from the analysis here is that the decision to include the post-2015 agenda in the Turkey and China G-20 summits would be a choice about the substance but also about the process of global economic governance, in which the G-20 has a leadership role. To do so in the way outlined here, would:

• Strengthen the global system of international institutions by bringing them together around a single comprehensive, integrated sustainability agenda;
• Create synergies between the United Nations and the other international institutions rather than identifying the post-2015 agenda with the U.N. alone and relying unnecessarily on the U.N. for its implementation;
• Connect G-20 leaders with a broader human and planetary agenda beyond economics and finance, which in turn would connect G-20 leaders with their publics as they visibly address the domestic concerns of their people in their global context; and
• Strengthen the role of the G-20 in global economic governance by putting the G-20 out in front as a broker among stakeholders, a catalytic coordinator of relevant domestic and international actors, and a leader on behalf of the concerns, lives, and livelihoods of people.

Selected References

Colin I. Bradford (2002), “Toward 2015: From Consensus Formation to Implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. Issues for the Future: The Implementation Phase”, Development Economics Department (DEC), The World Bank, December 2002.

Colin I. Bradford (2014), “The Changing World Economy and Global Economic Governance”, power point presentation at the Korean Delegation seminar “The OECD and Global Governance”, OECD, Paris, December 11, 2014.

Colin I. Bradford (2014), “Global Economic Governance and the Role of International Institutions”, Second High-level Policy Forum on Global Governance:  Scoping Papers, UNDP Beijing China, 22 October 2014.

Colin I. Bradford (2015), “Governance Innovations for Implementing the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda: Conference Report”,  Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., March 30, 2015.  http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Events/2015/03/30-post-2015-sustainable-development-agenda/330-PostReportFinal.pdf?la=en   

Ye Yu, Xue Lei and Zha Xiaogang (2014), “The Role of Developing Countries in Global Economic Governance---with a Special Analysis on China’s Role”, Second High-level Policy Forum on Global Governance:  Scoping Papers, UNDP Beijing China, 22 October 2014. Authors are from the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies.

Homi Kharas and John McArthur (2014), “Nine Priority Commitments to be Made at the UN’s July 2015 Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,” October 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/02/united-nations-financing-for-development-kharas-mcarthur

OECD (2014), “Policy Coherence for Development and the Sustainable Development Goals”, Paris: OECD, 10 December 2014, prepared for the 8^th Meeting of the National Focal Points for Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) held at the OECD on 17-18 December 2014. 

In the months leading up to the 2015 United Nations climate change conference in Paris starting November 30, global businesses have pledged to do their part for proactive climate action. To "capture and catalyze" these commitments, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in conjunction with the government of Peru, launched the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Change (NAZCA). NAZCA is an online portal that showcases commitment to action by companies, investors, cities and subnational regions to address climate change. To date, more than 2,000 companies—from Baosteel Group Corporation to Exxon Mobil Corporation to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.—have made voluntary commitments to reduce emissions, increase energy use efficiencies and invest in renewable energy sources.

IT sector stands out 

Proactive action by businesses to combat global climate change is not new. Over the past decade, businesses have increasingly engaged in voluntary climate action to share best practices, network, promote market mechanisms, and set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Despite this, not all businesses are eager participants. My recent paper on the role of the Global 500 companies in transnational climate governance shows that, after controlling for political economic and institutional factors at the country level, global businesses operating in the information technology (IT) sector are twice as likely as other firms to engage in proactive climate action. Next to the consumer staples sector, the IT sector has the highest share of global companies engaging in proactive climate action compared to the energy, health care, industrials, materials and utilities sectors.

Among the notable IT companies worldwide that have taken proactive climate action, including public disclosures of their carbon emissions, are Apple Inc., Google Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., LG Innotek, Microsoft Corp., Ericsson and Telefonica.

There are several reasons why IT companies are in a better position than other corporations to play a proactive role in climate change mitigation. First, IT companies, as a sector, tend to be wealthier, not only in terms of asset holdings but also profitability. They also employ a larger number of workers than other companies. Large and well-endowed corporations are better able to afford the costly investments necessary for deploying renewable energy and for undertaking carbon emissions management. According to my findings, wealthy corporations that employ a large number of workers have two to four time higher odds of proactive climate action than companies with smaller asset holdings and employee base.

Complementary capabilities

Second, my research also shows that, more often than not, when a company demonstrates a commitment to sustainability through complementary capabilities and competencies, namely investments in environmental R&D and/or certification with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, the odds are higher that the company also engages in voluntary climate action and carbon disclosure. For example, a larger share of companies in the IT sector (75 percent) are certified with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard than Global 500 companies excluding IT (54 percent). A similar pattern, albeit less pronounced, is also true of investments in environmental R&D by IT companies compared to other global companies (56 percent versus 48 percent).

Wealth endowment and complementary capabilities aside, IT companies are more likely than other Global 500 companies to have an in-house managerial- or executive-level sustainability officer. Close to half of all IT companies have formally created a position of a vice president of sustainability or a chief sustainability officer compared to about 40 percent of other global businesses. These in-house champions of sustainability policies and initiatives play a critical role in helping to align corporate vision and allocate the necessary resources toward sustainability efforts.

Among the world’s largest companies by revenue, Apple Inc. (rank 15^th) is a leader in proactive climate action: Apple has pledged to "maintain 100% renewable energy in datacenters… [and] maintain carbon neutrality of purchased electricity for U.S. corporate facilities achieved in 2014 through renewable energy purchases and onsite generation and procurement." In 2014, Apple hired Lisa Jackson, a former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as its vice president of environmental, policy, and social initiatives, reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook. Along with Jacky Haynes, Apple’s senior director of social and environmental responsibility who specializes in supplier responsibility, Jackson has brokered a relationship with the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs to train Apple facilities workers as part of Apple’s new Environmental, Health, and Safety Academy and to proactively publish emissions data of Apple’s supplier facilities in China. By committing to voluntary climate action, Apple and other corporations signal to consumers that they are socially responsible companies, not only to preempt public scrutiny but to gain an advantage in the "market for virtues."

Apple and Microsoft Corp. are the only two private sector entities that earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Green Power Partner of the Year award in 2015, which recognizes leadership in green power use and overall strategy and impact on the green power market.

Other IT companies, such as Autodesk, BT, Infosys, Salesforce and SAP have recently joined forces with Aviva, IKEA, Starbucks, Walmart, Marks and Spencer, Johnson & Johnson, among others, as part of RE100, a collaborative initiative of businesses, to set long-term target on powering their operations entirely with renewable energy.

Living up to promises

The fact that so many companies are recognizing the dangers of climate change and setting ambitious climate action goals is laudable. The biggest challenge will be seeing that they live up to their promises, especially given the voluntary nature of initiatives such as NAZCA. To thwart greenwashing, national governments and global governance organizations have an important role to play to keep the IT sector and other businesses accountable. The first step that NAZCA has taken is to invite "partnerships with others who would…make assessments of this type." A significant next step would be to publish guidelines and best practices for third-party monitoring and verification in order to strengthen the link between pledges for proactive action and ultimate follow-through by corporations. IT companies, as leaders in proactive climate action, should be at the forefront of working to establish best practices for adherence to voluntary commitments for mitigating global climate change.

The leaked information in the Panama Papers from the law firm Mossack Fonseca has captured the headlines for weeks and will continue to do so as further names are exposed. The scandal has placed Panama in the limelight and provided an unprecedented glimpse into the world of hidden money and tax avoidance. To understand its broader context, it is vital that we distinguish between legal corruption, like that exposed by the Panama Papers, and illegal corruption, like that exposed by the Unaoil scandal. Governments must seize the moment to take decisive action against both.  

The U.S., the U.K., and a range of other countries will announce commitments to combat corruption at the Anti-Corruption Summit on May 12, championed by Prime Minister David Cameron as a game-changing event. The question is whether these commitments will deliver concrete actions that target the most costly kinds of corruption that flourish globally today.  

Unfortunately, the world often engages in “summitry” filled with communiques, calls for coordination and exchanging information, or creating another toothless generic initiative, which offer media and photo opportunities that fulfill particular political objectives for some leaders. Let us see if it’s different this time.

Mossack Fonseca, and its home country Panama, are just a couple nodes in the vast and complex set of “enablers” of corruption and tax evasion around the world.     

For those seeking secret shelters and corporate shells, the mighty U.S. (which unsurprisingly doesn’t feature much in the Panama Papers) is one of the world’s most appealing destinations: Setting up a shell corporation in Delaware, for instance, requires less background information than obtaining a driver’s license. As seen in the chart below, this opacity, coupled with the size of the U.S. as a haven, means that it has been ranked the third most secretive jurisdiction among close to 100 assessed by the Financial Secrecy Index. Panama is 13th.

Figure 1: Financial Secrecy Index 2015 (Select jurisdictions, from the Tax Justice Network)

Source: The Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/introduction/fsi-2015-results

This graph depicts the top 40 worst performing jurisdictions as well as four select better performing jurisdictions (right of dashed line). The Index combines a qualitative secrecy score based on 15 indicators and a quantitative measure of a jurisdiction's share in global financial services exports. 

And the U.K. is an important enabler of corruption: It has stood by as its offshore jurisdictions and protectorates operate as safe havens for illicit wealth, which the Panama Papers make clear. The British Virgin Islands, for example, were the favored location for thousands of shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca.  

The Panama Papers speak only indirectly to core aspects of today’s global corruption challenge, which are neither about Panama nor taxes. We ought to view the resulting scandals in a broader light, and recognize the immense, complex webs of corruption that increasingly link economic and political elites around the globe.

Grand corruption

The most powerful figures who engage in high-level or “grand” corruption are hardly running scared following the Panama leak. These figures include kleptocrat leaders as well as oligarchs who wield enormous influence on government affairs. Often, these players interact and collude, forming high-powered public-private networks that make the traditional notion of corruption as an illegal transaction between two parties look like child’s play.

Corruption in these elite networks far transcends the unethical behavior of the typical tax avoider, as it involves the abuse of power to accumulate power and assets, often via the direct plunder of public resources, asset stripping, or large-scale bribery. The multi-billion-dollar scandal embroiling the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras illustrates the complexity of colluding networks, and how grand such corruption can inflict political and economic damage of historical proportions on a country. 

The oil sector provides many more illustrations of grand corruption. Few company officials may have been more relieved by the Panama Papers leak than those at Unaoil, whose own scandal had just erupted. Unaoil is an “enabler” company incorporated in Monaco that bribed and influenced government officials in various countries on behalf of multinational companies vying for lucrative procurement contracts. While overshadowed by the Panama leaks, the Unaoil case is at least as emblematic of the challenges in tackling global corruption. For instance, it shows the deeply ingrained practice of Iraqi government officials seeking bribes for the award of contracts and the willingness of companies to provide them.

Corrupt elites, including those embroiled in the Unaoil scandal, often use structures like shell corporations and tax havens (along with real estate and other investments) to hide their ill-gotten funds. However, even if the Panama Papers leak prompts more scrutiny on illicit financial flows and the reform of these opaque financial structures, grand corruption will continue in many locations.  It is noteworthy that the political fallout has been concentrated in relatively well-governed countries that do have accountability and anti-corruption systems in place, as illustrated by the resignations of the prime minister of Iceland, the industry minister of Spain, and the head of Chile’s Transparency International chapter. 

In sharp contrast, President Vladimir Putin brushed off the leaked Russian information as a Western anti-Putin conspiracy; in China, discussion and dissemination were muffled by media censorship; and, in Azerbaijan, exposure of details on President Aliyev’s family mining interests will hardly dent his hold on power. While reforms leading from the Panama leaks will hopefully deter tax dodgers and unethical corporations and individuals from hiding dirty assets, powerful corrupt leaders will continue to enjoy impunity.

Legal corruption and state capture   

The Panama Papers shed a sliver of light on the type of corruption that is perhaps most damaging and difficult to tackle: legal corruption and state capture. Around the world, powerful economic and political elites unduly influence laws and policies, shaping the rules of the game for their own benefit, or what has been called the “privatization of public policy and lawmaking.” This generates huge rents for the elite, increases their power, and exacerbates a country’s political and economic inequality.

Resource-rich countries provide many illustrations. In Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, and Venezuela, for example, political elites have used state-owned resource companies to serve patronage agendas, often—though not exclusively—through legal means.

In many industrialized countries, an example of state capture is the tax system itself. It is in the interest of elites to safeguard a worldwide network of secret offshore companies and tax havens as places to hide wealth—whether acquired legitimately or illicitly. The evidence on tax avoidance from the U.S. is telling: According to Zucman, since the 1950s the effective rate of corporate tax has decreased from 45 to 15 percent, whereas the nominal rate has only decreased from 50 to 35 percent. And U.S. companies make full use of foreign tax havens: According to a new Oxfam report, the top 50 American multinationals reported in 2008 that 43 percent of their foreign earnings came from five tax havens, accounting for only 4 percent of the companies’ foreign workforces. Further, Bourguignon reports that federal tax rates on the richest Americans fell by 15 percent between 1970 and 2004.

Risks of legal corruption in the U.S. run high because private money can so easily sway public affairs. Following the 2010 Citizen United ruling by the Supreme Court, private funds from deep pockets increasingly dominate the conduct of electoral campaigns. The avenues for private money to influence public officials may widen further, if forms of bribery traditionally considered illegal become legalized. A forthcoming Supreme Court decision could make it legal for public officials to receive gifts and other benefits from private individuals (potentially overturning the corruption conviction of a former Virginia governor for doing exactly that).  

Upfront, there are no easy solutions, especially because powerful decision-makers benefit from this status quo. But there is the opportunity, and public pressure, to reform.  As mentioned, the cause of tackling corruption often attracts token gestures, and David Cameron’s announcement of a new global anti-corruption agency could be at high risk of falling into this category. Rather, countries like the U.S. and U.K. must take firm action to reform their own practices, and push for the same from their partners such as the U.K. crown dependencies and overseas territories, the European Union and G20 members, and the recipients of overseas aid.

First, take legal corruption and state capture seriously. 

Transparency can be one game changer, especially if it addresses the channels of influence through which policy becomes “privatized.” Disclosures of campaign finance contributions, conflicts of interests, assets held by (and tax returns filed by) politicians and public officials, and parliamentary deliberations and votes can all discourage abuse and reveal hidden networks at play. Encouragingly, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently issued their first salvo, the report “Financing Democracy,” focusing on a few selected case studies, and as a next step it should be empowered to develop standards and carry out assessments on political finance for all OECD countries.

Transparency will only help if citizens can actively scrutinize and engage with their governments. Civic space is under attack in many jurisdictions, with activists and journalists facing intimidation, prosecution, or worse. Securing rights of expression and assembly should be the business of any international actor concerned with anti-corruption or economic governance. For instance, when considering funding requests from governments with weak records on protecting civil society—like Angola and Azerbaijan—the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as donors like the U.S. should prioritize civic accountability as well as broader transparency reforms.

Furthermore, grand corruption will not decline without more effective prosecutions and other sanctions that target bribe-takers, as well as the facilitators and middlemen of corruption, be they lawyers, accountants, or fixers like Unaoil. Of course, law enforcement authorities should also remain vigilant against bribe-paying companies; and governments—including OECD members implementing to varying degrees the OECD foreign bribery convention—would do well to emulate the active enforcement of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in this regard. But bribe-takers and facilitators have not faced sufficient scrutiny and sanction.

Second, get rid of shadowy corners.

Lessons yielded by recent events from the 2008 financial crisis to the Panama Papers suggest that major global players should not allow large corners of the global economy to escape scrutiny. The U.S. and the U.K. (with its offshores), should heed the calls for dismantling secrecy and tax havens. Seeds of effort, such as the U.S. government’s decision to require banks to know the identities of the individuals behind shell companies, are now coming to light, but broader efforts, including legislation, will also be required.  

Beneficial ownership transparency should become standard operating procedure, with governments following the example of the U.K., the Netherlands, and others in setting up public registries, and joining the movement toward a global registry. In the case of resource-rich countries, establishing sector-specific registries may be the right place to start. This practice is now mandated by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Within the extractive sector, home country governments should subject commodity traders to payment disclosure requirements when doing business with governments and state-owned companies. Governments of countries like Switzerland, the U.K., and Singapore that are home to corporate actors shoulder significant responsibility, especially in the current era of low commodity prices, when traders are entering into profitable new deals with cash-strapped resource-producing countries. Shining light in dark corners like these will render them less susceptible to abuse.

Third, prioritize transparency and scrutiny when public resources are allocated.

Whenever a government allocates resources for exploitation, it ought to do so in a fully transparent fashion. The Open Contracting Partnership has made great strides in defining a gold standard for such reporting, including guidance on issues such as open data, corporate identifiers, and beneficial ownership reporting.

Natural Resource Governance Institute research on oil and mining sector corruption shows that multiple types of high-value allocations require scrutiny and contract disclosure. These include the allocation of exploration and production licenses, but also on export, import, or transport rights, which have been associated with corruption in countries such as Indonesia, the Republic of Congo, and Ukraine. And most of the oil sector cases prosecuted under the U.S. FCPA have arisen around the award of service contracts, a segment of the oil industry where the Unaoil and Petrobras scandals also took place. Transparency should be the default setting for any transactions that allocate public resources. Further scrutiny is also needed on the abuse of (mis-)managed exchange rate regimes that generates rents for the few and creates major economic distortions, such as currently in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Egypt.

Concrete impact will also require a major attack on impunity since transparency and freedom of expression are necessary, but insufficient. And governments including those of the U.S. and the U.K. should adopt reforms to address legal corruption and various forms of opacity—whether addressing the capture by money in politics or the “dark corners” among oil traders headquartered in Geneva and London. 

An ambitious commitment to tackling corruption and impunity is not only needed now, but demanded by societies, as events in Brazil and elsewhere show. This is a potentially “game-changing” global moment to make real progress.  

This piece is also available in Spanish and French. 

Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill were just awarded the 2016 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The honor is presented to “a leading policymaker, social scientist, or public intellectual whose career demonstrates the value of using social science evidence to advance the public good.” In this case, however, for the first time the award was awarded jointly.

Here at Brookings, Belle and Ron have forged a powerful and unique intellectual partnership, founding and elevating the Center on Children and Families and producing world-class work on families, poverty, opportunity, evidence, parenting, work and education, and much more besides.

The Association highlighted Belle and Ron’s bipartisanship. This was appropriate, given that the two have different political backgrounds, and work with people across the political spectrum. The skills and attributes they display in order to work in this way are:

1. Deep respect for the views of others regardless of their politics.
2. Reverence for the evidence and for the facts.
3. A willingness to adapt their views to the facts, rather than (as so often in this town), the other way around. This has been true even when it has made their life more difficult with people on “their” side of the political spectrum.
4. A desire to work hard to bring ideas to bear on public policy. The point is to do good work, but also to have real impact.
5. An insatiable intellectual curiosity to find out more, push new boundaries, and to keep learning. (Both of them have new books out, of course.)

These attributes, when you think about it, are those every decent scholar should aspire to. Belle and Ron have shown us that the skills for bipartisanship turn out to be essentially the same skills as those required for good scholarship.

In his remarks at the Prize lecture, Ron focused on the rise, importance, and prospects for evidence-based policy. Ron has tackled this subject at book length in Show Me the Evidence. Here is part of what Ron had to say:

“Perhaps the most important social function of social science is to find and test programs that will reduce the nation’s social problems. The exploding movement of evidence-based policy and the many roots the movement is now planting, offer the best chance of fulfilling this vital mission of social science, of achieving, in other words, exactly the outcomes Moynihan had hoped for. Today, evidence-based policy rests on the mighty oak of program evaluation in general and the random assignment study in particular.”

Ron highlighted the growth of Pay for Success programs, the Obama administration’s emphasis on evidence-based initiatives, and the creation of the Ryan/Murray Commission on Evidence-Based Policy.

Ron argued that it was right to be skeptical about the likely impact of any particular intervention. But this is not to say that policy doesn’t work—just that some policies work, others don’t, and it good to know the difference. In his slides, Ron lists some programs that have been shown to have demonstrable, sustainable impact—what he described as “his entry in the evidence-based policy sweepstakes.”

But there are plenty of challenges ahead, including the need to improve our understanding of implementation; and the following critical question: “When a program fails, what’s next?” Ron argued that the answer should not be to simply pull the funding, but to work on improving performance.

Belle highlighted the work captured in her latest book, Generation Unbound, on how to reduce the damaging rise of unintended pregnancies and births in the U.S. Over 40 percent of children are born outside of marriage, and 60 percent of births to single women under age 30 are unplanned. In the spirit of being faithful to the facts, and focused on what works, Belle showed the costs of unintended pregnancies for poverty, family stability, and opportunity. Child poverty rates have increased, Belle estimates, by about 25 percent since 1970 because of changes in family structure.

So what are the solutions? In the spirit of following the evidence, Belle argued that the goal must be to help people plan for rather than drift into pregnancy, by broadening access to and use of long-acting reversible contraception. The best example is the intrauterine device, or IUD. The risks of pregnancy for women using this method of contraception are very much lower than for condoms or the pill: 

A fact-based analysis of a problem, followed by an evidence-based approach to solutions: Belle’s work on contraception (sometimes alongside Ron) is a perfect example of bipartisanship, impact-oriented scholarship and a commitment to evidence.

Downloads

• Download Isabel Sawhill's presentation
• Download Ron Haskins's presentation

As the world pays its tributes to the critically ailing former South African President Nelson Mandela, youth across Africa are stepping up their own tributes to Madiba in the form of civic service on Mandela Day. The United Nations and the African Union have called on citizens across Africa and the world to volunteer 67 minutes— representing the 67 years of Mandela’s public service—to community projects on his birthday, July 18.

The Africa Peace Service Corps (APSC) has launched volunteering projects in Nairobi, Kenya; Cape Town and rural Limpopo, South Africa; Lusaka, Zambia; Abuja, Nigeria; villages in Uganda and other countries.  Four hundred youths and 35 partners assembled last July at the United Nations conference in Nairobi to launch the Pan-African service project, spurring civic action in health, climate change, youth entrepreneurship and positive peace. 

A 2012 Brookings report, “Volunteering and Civic Service in Three African Regions,” released at the Nairobi conference and co-authored by three African scholars notes the benefits of volunteering (“Ubuntu”) in South, West and East Africa in addressing youth livelihoods, health and peace-building.  The report further documents policy recommendations and strategies linking youth service and entrepreneurship in addressing the daunting task of youth unemployment across the region.  Dr. Manu Chandaria  (Comcraft CEO and Global Peace Foundation Africa chairman) and Les Baillie (chairman of Kenya mobile phone giant Safaricom Foundation, which created Africa’s M-Pesa mobile banking microfinance success) have assembled corporate leaders to back APSC youth social enterprises in tree planting and waste management to generate green jobs and reach Kenya’s goal of ten percent tree coverage.

Nelson Mandela’s life of struggle and triumph, in particular his time and insights during his time unjustly incarcerated on Robben Island, provides a rich textbook for these young social entrepreneurs.  During my recent Harris Wofford Global Service Fellowship with the University of Cape Town Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) and Cross Cultural Solutions, while teaching an entrepreneurship class in the townships I was able to see the teeming spirit of youth enterprise first-hand alive in the poorest communities.  A South African national assets demonstration has been launched this year to tap the power of service and entrepreneurship in generating savings among township youths from these deliberations with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Ford Foundation, University of Johannesburg Center for Social Development and Washington University Center for Social Development and Brookings’ Africa Growth Initiative partner DPRU, among others.

Along with addressing Mandela’s dream of ending poverty, a recent Brookings report, “Impacts of Malaria Interventions and their Potential Additional Humanitarian Benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa,” outlines the potential significant peace-building effects of service in sub-Saharan Africa by highlighting the joint efforts of the Muslim Sultan and Catholic Cardinal of Nigeria in tackling malaria along with those of the Africa Malaria Leaders Alliance with PEPFAR support.  The contributions of volunteering to both peace and development outcomes are further underscored in the draft of a United Nations post-2015 “sustainable development goals” report.

Amidst inevitable political debates over the Mandela legacy, his generous spirit and legacy of reconciliation rises high above Cape Town’s Table Mountain and across the Pan-African youth landscape.  The challenge of applying his vision and spiritual values in addressing poverty through emerging demonstrations of youth service, assets and entrepreneurship will test the commitment of Africa’s next generation of young freedom pioneers, guided by this humble giant’s profound legacy now spanning the globe.

At the recent celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, Dr. King's daughter, Rev. Bernice King, cited Syria and called for international approaches rooted in love and embodying her father's commitment to nonviolence.  It is truly ironic that, after President Obama lauded King's legacy on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the administration announced its plans for unilateral military action to address the Syrian government’s horrific use of chemical weapons.

The situation in Syria causes us to ask:  Have all nonviolent alternatives been exhausted in accomplishing the president’s goal of responding to the brutal crimes of the Assad regime while averting a new regional (potentially global) war?

While, to date, public discourse has focused on the pros and cons of a punitive military strike, has adequate attention been given to the probability that a cruise missile strike will prompt retaliatory action—threatened by Syria, Hezbollah and Iran—against the state of Israel?  Have we considered adequately that the spiral could continue to an unthinkable escalation, keeping in mind Dr. King’s admonition that violence begets violence?  As United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated:  "Diplomacy should be given a chance and peace given a chance.”

In sum, before authorizing or taking military action, could Congress and the administration assure us that certain steps (such as the following) have been incorporated as part of a broader regional solution?

Engage nonmilitary options in a multilateral coalition—Rather than going it alone, has the U.S. exhausted all efforts to lead a multilateral coalition to stop and punish Syrian chemical weapons use by other means under international law?  Could the pending United Nations inspections report pave the way for further multilateral interventions, ranging from global sanctions on Syria to criminal prosecution of the Assad regime at The Hague?  Could a tough U.N. sanctions resolution in response to the regime’s criminal use of chemical weapons be issued in preparation for the U.N. General Assembly this month?

Make renewed attempts to engage Russia and China, together with Track II diplomacy partners—The Russians are as concerned as the U.S. about the delivery of materials of mass destruction into terrorist hands.  The International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (IISD), its Dartmouth Conference and other Track II partners could be engaged, along with multilateral and U.S.-Russia congressional exchanges (including China and our allies) to further diplomatic action and sanctions.   

Engage Middle East and global interfaith partners—The sectarian fault lines across the Middle East require serious interfaith dialogue guided by principles and values that are common to all the Abrahamic faiths, addressing the conflict through what has been called the “relationship paradigm" of sustained dialogue. Initiatives such as the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, interfaith endeavors by Pope Francis and the Saudi king’s new interfaith center should be tapped.  A Brookings research report with Terror Free Tomorrow on the soft power effects of interfaith engagement and service in hot spots like Nigeria and South Asia illustrates this largely untapped potential.

Executive Order on Track II diplomacy, interfaith and service initiatives—President Obama could issue an executive order directing the State Department, the Defense Department, the White House Offices on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and Social Innovation and Civic Participation, the Peace Corps and other agencies to report in 30 days on strategies and Track II partners that could further support regional solutions in the Middle East and other global hot spots.  Stepped-up multilateral emergency humanitarian aid for the mounting number of refugees from the Syrian conflict could also be marshaled with the United Nations, the Arab League, NATO and the U.S. 

In taking this “road less traveled” by charting a nonviolent direct action campaign and multilateral coalition to punish Syria and strengthen partnerships for peace, President Obama and Congress would establish a higher ground and marshal moral force with potential to break the cycle of violence, thus continuing the trailblazing legacy of Nelson Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi.

In late October at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok, a multi-stakeholder coalition was launched to promote the role of youth and civil society in advancing post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The youth initiatives, fostering regional integration and youth service impact in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and counterpart regions of Northeast and South Asia, will be furthered through a new Asia-Pacific Peace Service Alliance. The alliance is comprised of youth leaders, foundations, civil society entities, multilateral partners and U.N. agencies. Together, their initiatives illustrate the potential of youth and multi-stakeholder coalitions to scale impacts to meet SDG development targets through youth service and social media campaigns, and partnerships with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations, corporations and research institutes.

The “Asia-Pacific Forum on Youth Volunteerism to Promote Participation in Development and Peace” at UN ESCAP featured a new joint partnership of the U.S. Peace Corps and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) as well as USAID support for the ASEAN Youth Volunteering Program. With key leadership from ASEAN youth entitles, sponsor FK Norway, Youth Corps Singapore and Peace Corps’ innovative program in Thailand, the forum also furthered President Obama’s goal of Americans serving “side by side” with other nations’ volunteers. The multi-stakeholder Asia-Pacific alliance will be powered by creative youth action and a broad array of private and public partners from Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Korea, China, Mongolia, Japan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the U.S. and other nations.

During the event, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, ESCAP executive secretary, pointed out that “tapping youth potential is critical to shape our shared destiny, as they are a source of new ideas, talent and inspiration. For ESCAP and the United Nations, a dynamic youth agenda is vital to ensure the success of post-2015 sustainable development.”

Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, former ASEAN secretary-general, called for a new Asia-wide multilateralism engaging youth and civil society.  In his remarks, he drew from his experience in mobilizing Asian relief and recovery efforts after Cyclone Nargis devastated the delta region of Myanmar in May 2008. Surin, honorary Alliance chairman and this year’s recipient of the Harris Wofford Global Citizenship Award, also noted the necessity of a “spiritual evolution” to a common sense of well-being to redress the “present course of possible extinction” caused by global conflicts and climate challenges. He summoned Asia-Pacific youth, representing 60 percent of the world’s young population, to “be the change you want to see” and to “commit our youth to a useful cause for humanity.”

The potential for similar upscaled service efforts in Africa, weaving regional integration and youth volunteering impact, has been assessed in Brookings research and policy recommendations being implemented in the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Recommendations, many of which COMESA and ASEAN are undertaking, include enabling youth entrepreneurship and service contributions to livelihoods in regional economic integration schemes, and commissioning third-party support for impact evidence research.

A good example of successful voluntary service contributions from which regional economic communities like ASEAN can learn a lot is the current Omnimed pilot research intervention in Uganda. In eastern Ugandan villages, 1,200 village health workers supported by volunteer medical doctors, Uganda’s Health Ministry, Peace Corps volunteers and Global Peace Women are addressing lifesaving maternal and child health outcomes furthering UNICEF’s campaign on “integrated health” addressing malaria, diarrheal disease and indoor cooking pollution. The effort has included construction of 15 secure water sources and 1,200 clean cook stoves along with randomized controlled trials.

Last week, the young leaders from more than 40 nations produced a “Bangkok Statement” outlining their policy guidance and practical steps to guide volunteering work plans for the new Asia-Pacific alliance. Youth service initiatives undertaken in “collective impact” clusters will focus on the environment (including clean water and solar villages), health service, entrepreneurship, youth roles in disaster preparedness and positive peace. The forum was co-convened by ESCAP, UNESCO, the Global Peace Foundation and the Global Young Leaders Academy.