How Can the UN Sustaining Peace Agenda Live Up to Its Potential?

Abstract

This chapter is being written at a time when our global social and economic systems are breaking down (Schwab 2019). Many of them were designed to concentrate power and benefits in a few hands while distributing the damage from wanton exploitation to the many. Over 4 billion poor people cannot use the law to improve their lives (WJP 2019). They only experience it as a punishment for something.Democracy with all its virtues and deficits is not faring well. It is crumbling before our eyes, even in countries judged to be its exemplars and ferocious defenders. This is shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny (Repucci and Slipowitz 2021). The latest democracy index Youssef Mahmoud is senior advisor at the International Peace Institute. He is a former undersecretary-general who has led several peace operations in Central Africa.