Deepening the Case for Egalitarianism in the International Order: A Comparative Perspective

1 Introduction

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, … [the] General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations…

UDHR Preamble

On 10 December 1948, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Hailed the Magna Carta of humanity, the road map enshrined interdependent and indivisible principles to stem the abuse of power by nation-states.^[1] This achievement heightened the prospects for coexistence in greater harmony within and across sovereignties and civilizations. However, the Cold War ideologies thwarted the rigorous evolution of the Declaration into legal entitlements and engendered politicizations that fomented consequential hierarchizations of rights. Subjected to considerable protraction, the principles espoused unanimously in the UDHR were gradually codified into binding law by a set of Covenants which opened for ratification in 1966 and came into force in 1976.^[2] These are the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) sponsored by the West and the International Covenant for Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICSECR) favored by the socialist East Bloc. In 1986, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development (ROD) advocated by the so-called Third World for a semblance of geopolitical balance.^[3] It is telling that ROD never materialized into legally binding norms to bolster the rhetoric of equality as a core credo of the UN.^[4]

The fragmentation of the categories of human rights graphically reflects fierce contestations that ensued on the heels of the UDHR.^[5] Nonetheless, the unequivocal ratification of the Declaration speaks eloquently of the force of its vision and purpose. This essay asserts that the timelessness of UDHR is vindicated by lessons taught by the disruptive outbreak of the coronavirus and by the eruption of full-scale military assault in Ukraine by the Russian Federation. It elaborates on the outcomes and impact of Russia’s invasion that fortify geopolitical fault-lines to argue the virtue of honoring the rich tapestry of diversity and pluralism that distinguishes the system regulating international relations. Hence, it critiques the tenacious influence of Western power and authority which it identifies as symptomatic of the wholesale imposition of Eurocentric intellectual thoughts and socio-cultural traditions in the consolidation of the rule by modern institutions of the sovereign nation-state.^[6] The essay suggests that the multiplier effects of this historical contingency distort multilateralism, eroding legitimacy and undermining faith in the world public order. In conclusion, it asserts a bias for hope in the ability of the international community to course correct.

The main hypothesis of this essay is that recentering equality as the heart of multilateral cooperation reduces the risks of insecurities that culminate in war. War is construed in this context as conflict over resources,^[7] and the nature of the target enemy is presumed to be expansive. This proposition was vividly captured by the UN and World Health Organization (WHO) chiefs’ concerted alerts that the world was at ‘war with a virus.’^[8] COVID-19 dramatized the profound perils of policies that normalize inequality. This essay sets forth the pandemic along with the war in Ukraine as constitutive of a testbed for evaluating the costs and benefits of egalitarianism as a bulwark for global security. Conceptualizing Africa as ground zero for urgent action, the analysis in this essay frames global security as a generative and self-reinforcing resource that requires political will and social arrangements to cultivate and safeguard.

The coronavirus recovery strategies exposed the enormous extent to which Africa is left out of cogent conversations that affect its fate. Conversely, shifting configurations and competitions for power intensified in the aftermath of Russia’s aggression magnified the rising appeal of the continent as a stakeholder in global politics. Through the prisms of the war that the world waged against COVID-19 and the unprovoked war that Russia launched in contravention of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the essay probes lessons learned about the threats posed to global security by inequitable resource distribution. Buttressing cross-cultural perspectives about the correlation between war and resource control, it foregrounds both the war against COVID-19 and Russia’s war as manifestations of the risks inherent when powerful states are blinded by their strength to the realities of the world around them.^[9]

The argument advanced in this essay to support deepening the case for egalitarianism in the international order is informed by the conceptualization of equality in the UN system. Concurrent with the preamble of the UDHR excerpted earlier in the epigraph, the UN Charter avers the determination to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, while reaffirming ‘faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equality rights of men and women and of nations large and small …’ Article 1 of the Charter sets forth the purpose of the UN to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and to be the center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.^[10] Article 2.1 of the Charter underscores that, ‘The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members’. Through the years, the UN General Assembly has also adopted several multilateral treaties and championed various initiatives reinforcing the principle of equality.^[11]

This essay draws on a literature survey of public discourses, primary documents, and secondary materials to explain the need to deepen the culture of egalitarianism as a linchpin to counteract race-based discrimination and other forms of dispossessions that enable environment hospitable for insecurity to flourish. To this end, it urges a critical appraisal of how racial inequality interacts symbiotically with asymmetric power relations to reproduce divergent threats to lasting security, peace, and prosperity. The evaluation undertaken in this essay is structured along three lines. The first section reviews crucial insights from the pandemic mitigation measures to elucidate the logic of centering equity as a fundamental in distributing global public goods. Part II discusses aspects of the war in Ukraine to reinforce the argument for the framework of egalitarianism in multilateral cooperation. Relying on empirical observations and policy concerns about the tragedy of inequity as a paramount source of insecurity in both efforts to combat COVID-19 and Russia’s unjust invasion, the final segments examine the outlook for equity as a strategy to fight the root causes of war and to sow peace.

2 The Coronavirus Pandemic

The inequalities unfurled by the pandemic substantiated the usefulness of equity as a bulwark for global security. COVID-19 put center-stage the profound ramifications of a lack of equity in international relations. It irradiated the realities of interdependence, amplified the dysfunctionalities entangling existing multilateralism, and threw up crucial lessons that the world must heed to prepare better for the future. It revealed the dangers of narrow understandings of self-interest and drove home the truism that ‘there is no you without me’. It verified recurrent data that show how the web of prejudice that lacerate racially marginalized populations mirror a pandemic that disparately attacks their baseline indicators of wellbeing and agency.^[12]

Highlighting humanity’s interconnectedness, the viral attack demonstrated that the larger society is not immune from the egregious consequences of racialized discrimination in marginalized domains. Work by the likes of Laura Pulido lend credence to theorizations that uncover how centuries of racial production structured the COVID-19 pandemic.^[13] Writing about the political ecology of the pandemic, Neely and Lopez chronicle the uneven impact produced by slavery, colonization, and imperialism. They note that these adversities created perilous patterns of inequality that resulted in differential exposure to COVID-19 and in differential ability to cope.^[14] The authors reason that it takes political will to sit with the ‘uncomfortability’ of thinking about and trying to address the legacies of racial capitalism on the health and lives of vulnerable members of society.

The pandemic dramatized the relationship between inequality and global security, indicting a parochial approach to combating the virus. Bill Gates’ impassionate plea against allowing the virus to run rampant in low-income countries echoed alarms that the free market ethos of everyman for himself guarantee that ‘the devil take the hindmost’. COVID took as many lives as the Holocaust worldwide. Although Africa is not a monolith, the UN warned that it could be the epicenter for the seismic shock of COVID-19, predicting deaths ranging from 300,000 to 3.3 million Africans.^[15] Despite grim predictions anchored on poor socioeconomic conditions coupled with huge inequities in diagnostics, therapeutics, and access to vaccination, the scientific community was mystified that the continent escaped the worst scourge of diseases and deaths. The relief spelled by the low mortality and morbidity was tempered by excess deaths that may not have occurred but for the pandemic and by the astronomical costs on local economies.^[16]

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director, attributed Africa’s resilience against COVID-19 to the wealth of experience that it gained controlling prior virus outbreaks.^[17] Some scientists posit the possibility that the low case rates suggest the preexistence of immune cells that detect and annihilate target pathogens.^[18] Notwithstanding promising clues that immunity against the virus may be endemic in select groups, enduring mistrust of biomedical research in black communities hampered the prospects of verifying the clues and unlocking latent value.^[19] Vaccine hesitancy among demographics that bear the brunt of discrimination reaffirmed credibility gaps that mar the integrity of idealizing equality as a pillar of the contemporary world order.^[20]

The pandemic brought out the best of shared humanity, illustrating the capacious scope of proximal and distal neighbors to do better for each other.^[21] Yet, iterations of realpolitik translated into vaccine hoarding that triggered a surge of intergroup competition for ‘who gets what, when, and how’ based on false presuppositions of relative worth. These actions perpetuated the gradation of what lives are worth saving as a hallmark of the subordination of difference. Penalizing difference and politicizing care to measure what lives matter, vaccine nationalism enlivened epic inequities that underpin international relations.

The speed and scale of the spread, severity of cases, and socioeconomic disruptions of the viral attack showed that no country could exit the pandemic alone. International leaders hammered on the pressing need to close ranks in fighting the war against the virus. Enunciating that success in controlling the virus in Africa was in the interest of the whole world, because no one will be safe if the virus finds sanctuary somewhere, the UN Secretary-General underscored the exigent for global solidarity. He then underlined the importance of improving political will, commitment, and resources to address conditions compounding Africa’s vulnerabilities.^[22] However, the pandemic brought to fore the gulf between the principle and practice of international cooperation as the reluctance of self-aggrandizing elites to share vaccine supplies neutralized the ideal of equality as a driving force for cooperation.

The war against the coronavirus captured the cogency of delicately balancing unilateral and cooperative agendas to combat inequity as a source of insecurity. Deferring to the right of a sovereign state to prioritize the responsibility of protecting its own people, Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO’s Director-General, enjoined relevant national authorities to ensure that preference for the welfare of their citizens did not override the pressing need for international cooperation. Stressing that vaccine equity is not charity because no country can vaccinate its way out of the pandemic alone, he clarified that ending the uneven distribution of vaccines is in every country’s best interest since the longer inequity is perpetuated, the more the virus spreads and evolves in unpredictable ways.^[23]

Harnessing the momentum congruent in crosscutting pandemic recovery plans, WHO summoned a special session of the World Health Assembly to consider the advantages of developing an international legal instrument to strengthen national, regional, and global capacities and resilience for future pandemics. Urging countries to unite in negotiating a treaty against the existential threats to humanity’s shared security and wellbeing, the Director-General marshalled justifications for nations to compromise and find the common ground for a global accord.^[24] Forged from a solid recognition that there is no future but a common future, the accord sought to spur a coherent global health security architecture for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Further, it prioritized the need for equitable universal access to countermeasures like vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and universal health for all. The crux of the agreement dovetails with admonitions that COVID-19 could be the last major pandemic humanity faces, if salient political actors honor the ‘oneness’ of the global collective in building robustly to protect against future emergencies.^[25]

Centering equity as a lens to reform the architecture for global security makes obvious the paradox of hope and tragedy that inheres in the war that Putin waged against Ukraine. Although this act of aggression pervert the foundations of international law, its outbreak during the pandemic amplified the absurdities of investing heavily in military infrastructure that proved incapable of safeguarding security in the unconventional warfare compelled by COVID-19. The impotence of outsized armament in fighting the virus betrayed the confidence built up by the military industrial complex about the indispensability of military means for security. The insecurity caused by the unpredictable covid black swan exemplify novel uncertainties in the offing. It also intensifies the need to rethink global security by promoting other considerations beyond preoccupation with militarization and arms competition. Apropos here is Cyrus Vance’s succinct opinion that the problem of nuclear and conventional arms reflects weaknesses in the international system that lacks a significant structure of laws and norms of behavior respected by all states.^[26]

3 Putin’s War Against Ukraine

Akin to the intricacies of fighting the war against the coronavirus, the war in Europe bear out the expedience of bridging equity gaps in resource distribution within and across borders.^[27] As if living for over two years with COVID-19 was not enough of a call to arms for the global community, the pandemic was followed by an imminent threat of a nuclear attack by Russia. Ironically, Putin, who fled into isolation during the outbreak of the coronavirus, emerged at the breakthrough to attack the peace and security brokered in Europe after the unspeakable atrocities of WWII. Upon declaring war, he lowered the threshold for employing nuclear force and stoked inflammatory rhetoric to leverage inhibitions against sparking a conflict of nuclear-armed powers.

Russia commands the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal estimated at 6255 warheads; the USA has 5550; China is in a distant third place with 350 followed by France’s 290.^[28] Russia’s national security policies, strategy, and doctrine entail expansive nuclear programs that allow the threat and exercise of limited first use of nuclear weapons in conventional operations to test the adversaries’ resolve.^[29] This so-called ‘escalate to de-escalate’ doctrine derives from the expectation that nuclear threats can coerce, punish and/or paralyze competing nuclear powers to resolve a conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.^[30] The United States views correcting such perception of consequences as a strategic imperative and refutes the premise that it is unwilling to respond to Russia’s employment of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.^[31]

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on 21 September 2022, US President Biden denounced Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship, urging good faith for non-proliferation, disarmament, and arms control. Excoriating Putin’s threat to use nuclear weaponry, he warned that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.^[32] This assertion reiterated a pledge by nuclear powers to create a security environment conducive to progress on security for all, increase mutual understanding and confidence, and prevent arms race that benefit none and endanger all.^[33]

Antithetical to the constellation of Western Enlightenment values and the principles underpinning the UN’s establishment, Putin’s deployment of the Russian war machine to attack Ukraine’s sovereign territory earned swift condemnations. Admonishing Western democracies decades ago to stand together in strict compliance with the UN Charter, Winston Churchill insisted that faltering will eviscerate years invested in stitching together the global security platform and threaten overwhelming catastrophe.^[34] Russia’s incursion into Ukraine emulated its annexation of Crimea and its attack of Georgia.^[35] The tepid reaction of the US and its allies and partners to these prior attacks intimate that they underestimated the possibility that the precedents set by Putin would metastasize to ail them.^[36]

Stipulating action on threats to peace, breaches of peace, and acts of aggression, Article 51 of the UN Charter provides that nothing in the Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the UN. This right can be exercised until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Shortly after Putin launched his attack in violation of international law, a resolution presented in support of Ukraine failed approval by the UN Security Council. Russia which held the rotating presidency of the Council refused to recuse itself and chaired the deliberations intended to condemn its act. The Council voted 11-1 with Russia as the sole opponent blocking the resolution. It got away with this legalized sleight of hand by invoking the veto power it enjoys as one of the five permanent members of the Council along with the US, UK, France, and China. Whereas this multipolar Council fell prey to the flawed inbuilt veto mechanism that often castrate its ability to discharge definitive obligations, the General Assembly members, all of whom enjoy equal voting rights, adopted a resolution presented in an emergency meeting demanding that Russia cease its use of force promptly. This was only the 11th time such a meeting was called since 1945 when the UN began.^[37]

Rounds of bilateral diplomatic missions and marathon multilateral talks fostered humanitarian aid and operational and strategic support for Ukraine. These were boosted with economic sanctions and financial penalties that targeted Russian banks, hydrocarbon, and military exports. Shocks from the unprecedented coordination of sanctions and embargos teetered the Russian economy on the brink of collapse as global companies cut ties and bailed out.^[38] Commentators across the spectrum applauded this show of force.^[39] Some analysts predicted that worsening socioeconomic conditions would organically foment popular discontent and insurgency against the Kremlin.^[40] Stepping up the pressure, technology experts jumped into the fray, quickening attention to the conundrum that states are not the only key players in today’s theatre of war. These stakeholders rolled out non-kinetic measures to undermine Putin’s disinformation, strategic intelligence, and capabilities for combat command, control, communication, and coordination.^[41]

The UN General Assembly suspended Russia from the Human Rights Council amidst accusations of war crimes. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that most civilian casualties arose from the indiscriminate use of heavy artillery, multi-launch rocket systems, and air strikes in populated urban areas protected under international humanitarian law, including hospital, school, and residential sites.^[42] The grinding grief of the frontal assault that the global public witnessed via varying media outlets vividly portrayed the realities of war often suppressed by state propaganda machinery.^[43] Technological and media advances allow for readily accessible news cycles that disrupt and democratize information control, unmask the horrors of war, and raise questions that pierce the façade of rationalizations finessed by vested interests.^[44]

Despite the imbalance of power enacted by Russia’s state-of-the-art military arsenal, the war has not met Putin’s tactical and strategic calculus for a fait accompli, proving the pitfalls of hyper-masculine aggression for global security.^[45] The invasion of Ukraine united NATO and complicated Russia’s relationship with its neighbors, pushing formally nonaligned countries like Finland and Sweden to strive to join NATO.^[46] It also forced other European states like Ireland to revisit longstanding traditions of military neutrality.^[47] Rapid international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised eyebrows about dissimilar reactions to conflicts in other parts of the world.^[48] Some believe that the response parallels power dynamics that entrench double standards and pervert venerable equality values enshrined in the code of conduct for multilateral cooperation and consultation. The dissonance is typified by the doctrine of exceptionalism branded by the US which led in solidifying the transatlantic alliance behind Ukraine.^[49] Antecedent like the US’s deployment of this doctrine in defiance of international norms while assailing its emulators as rogue states provoked strong skepticisms about reprisals of Russia’s unilateral attack by some Western powers. These hegemons were particularly infamous for masterminding calamitous out-of-area wars for ulterior motives without achieving international consensus in the UN.^[50]

Russia’s belligerence skyrocketed the number of its residents searching for a way out of the country to avoid worsening dire consequences.^[51] However, this exodus was dwarfed by Ukrainian emigration. By the second month of the war, almost 10 % of the population or 4 million refugees had fled to other countries especially in Europe.^[52] Europe’s attitude and behavior towards Ukrainian refugees contrasts starkly with its response to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. At the height of this crisis in 2015, there were approximately 1.3 million migrants, including asylum seekers and economic refugees from Africa.^[53] The European Union (EU) fastened the floodgates at its borders on the pretext that it could not cope with the influx.^[54] Reactionary political structures and ideologies capitalized on rising tensions to distort the symbiotic relationship between care and control in borderwork, differentiating the logic of humanitarianism (the hand that cares) and securitization within the police state (the hand that strikes).^[55] Credible records revealed national authorities graded categories of lives hierarchically as Europeans seethe with xenophobic hostility against affected black and brown lives crossing the Mediterranean.^[56] Yet, in a glaring policy reversal that seemingly ratified ‘epidermal citizenship’ and white skin as passport, the EU readily granted safe passage to over 2 million people from Ukraine which is not an EU member within 2 weeks of Russia’s aggression.^[57]

While Europe cordially welcomed the Ukrainian influx, pertinent officials shut the doors on Africans who were fleeing the same war. The African Union (AU) took exception to the prejudicial treatment that became a defining characteristic of emerging narratives as contravening international law, citing UN provisions that all fleeing a conflict zone share the same prerogative and right to safe passage, regardless of the passport or skin color.^[58] Amid the groundswell of global antiwar sentiments, even Ukrainian security and border patrols caught in the crossfire of Russia’s ethnocentric siege neglected to eschew segregation and racialized the hierarchy of lives. Audaciously, Ukraine’s foreign minister alleged that Africa and Ukraine are in ‘the same boat’ because Russia’s attack created global food insecurity that hit Africa hard.^[59] This incredulous apologia is rebuttable by a cursory check of the disparate impact amid unequal treatment of Africa by Ukranians themselves.

Curiously, as Ukraine broadcast advertorials to recruit soldiers worldwide, Africans whose compatriots were sabotaged from evacuating the war zone volunteered to enlist. Some other African youth volunteered to fight for Russia.^[60] These recruitments exhibited virulent exploitations of Africa’s vulnerable youth, who are willing to escape to Europe by any means necessary.^[61] African governments objected to these trends, although they sidestepped the crux of the matter which is about how to fight factors that push virile youth who are ordinarily the wealth of nations to weather untold obstacles in migrating to Europe. In a different context, Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, summed up the quintessence of the crises confronting his administration thus:

we are navigating a perfect storm of adverse circumstances – a world economy reeling from the recessionary shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, price and supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine, the emergence of armed non-state actors, and all the challenges associated with catering for the youngest populations in the world. But this is also a moment of opportunity – one in which we can strengthen our institutions, deliver on socioeconomic development, and deepen our commitment to building successful democratic states.^[62]

The European theater of war forcefully brought home the limitations of an economy of war to help refute orthodoxies that inflate the value of superior armament for global security. The shortfalls of policy focus on the use of military force for geopolitical competition and balance at this critical juncture in history broadens the opportunity for verifying the strategic potential of a robust relationship between equity and security. The war crystallized evidence to assert the centrality of equality and/or equity for global security. The case for egalitarianism suggests that Putin may not have ventured to attack Ukraine had the international order caringly heed early warning signs about his czarist ambitions. Moreover, it prompts querying if caring reconstruction of the Russian Federation at the end of the Cold War may have bestowed sufficient dividends of democracy to motivate Russians to actively own stakes in world peace and help internally curb the risks of czarist expansionism to global security.^[63] Perhaps, close attentiveness to equity may have even prevented Vladmir Putin’s rise as President if post-Cold War reconstruction had enabled cooperation to pursue security for all through political and institutional machinery.^[64] More immediately, a propensity to caringly substantiate the equality principle may have obviated the racialism that subjected Africans to abject discrimination in the war.

The aftermath of Russia’s attack against Ukraine on Africans instantiate how inequality aggravates insecurity. The burden of discrimination is not limited to orbiting Afrophobia reflected in the racist overlays of vaccine apartheid, administering irregular migrations, or managing conflict. A bigger picture of the impairing weight of inequality is exemplified by the fact that Africa is facing more severe climate change effects than other continents, although it bears the least responsibility for global warming.^[65] Africa’s vulnerability index is magnified by its comparative disadvantage in multilateral negotiations. A telling barometer was what happened at the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November 2022 where the USA, EU, and UK opposed setting up a finance apparatus for just mitigation, adaptation, and green energy transition in climate vulnerable nations.^[66] Protesters impugned the rich countries’ duplicity in inducing Africa to remain their gas station by funding fossil fueling. This is notwithstanding that Africa is the habitat of 60 percent of the world’s best solar energy resources but has only one percent installed photovoltaic capacity.^[67]

4 Conclusion

Consistent with theories of change which proffer the necessity for dynamic institutions like the UN to adapt and grow to survive, this essay reasons that lessons learned from cataclysmic world histories reveal the significance of egalitarianism for global security. Building on this insight, the analysis enquires into the necessity of substantiating the principle of equality as a fundamental for international cooperation. This is to mitigate evidence-based sources of insecurity, prime among which are the patent inequality of individuals and groups. To this end, the essay suggests that if the ideal of equality is at the center of dealing with COVID-19, the comeback would be stronger than the setback of the pandemic. By the same token, it evaluates what it would look like to harness and situate this ideal at the heart of international relations to address the war in Ukraine.

Recent manifestations of the costs of inequalities to global security capture how relevant authorities cherry-pick which lives are worth saving based on arbitrary subjectivities. In the war against the viral attack by COVID-19, vaccine nationalism, which disadvantaged Africa most of all, epitomized ugly asymmetric dynamics. In Russia’s war, the outpouring of care and responsibility for Ukraine by global power elites proved conspicuously the resourcefulness of principled commitment, even if the outsized mobilization for whites reinscribed sabotaging patterns of inequality. The discrimination that Africans confronted in the same war added to the preferential treatment of Ukraine in personifying the intractable scourge of inequality.

The unremitting experience of humanity verify that war of any kind – ranging from military, hybrid, and other forms of conflicts to marshalling mitigation measures to maneuver an impartial ‘equal opportunity’ viral attack – is seldom a judicious solution, let alone a panacea. The object lessons of the ongoing wars against threats constituted by inequity give meaning to the proverb that ‘prevention is better than cure’. The international system is neither bereft of technologies to redress underlying inequities that enable environments for war nor is it impossible for it to lead in cultivating a transparent and accountable culture of egalitarianism as a fundamental for universal security. The integral nature of constructive dialogue in the scaffold for global governance under the rubric of the UN makes possible the process of open discussion as a precondition for international politics and conveys a favorable disposition to evidence-based learning. Even if the confines of prevailing power disparities delimit the scope of influence, the constructivist thrust of deliberation and debate is amenable to bringing issues to the global public’s attention to help shape the direction of the future.

Against this backdrop, the essay explores the utility of opportunities unfolding in these uncertain times for international cooperation to innovate on the potentially revolutionary role of equity in revitalizing human rights policy as a framework to help solve problems posed by inequality to global security. Advancing human rights may not necessarily define the current multilateralism’s apex of consciousness and considerations as targets for peaceful coexistence to flourish. However, the strong correlation between this technology of governance and security continuously calls for bold action by states to achieve them. The time is now as the world marks the UDHR’s diamond jubilee.