ICM Final Report – “Pulling Together: The Multilateral System and Its Future”

Entitled “Pulling Together: The Multilateral System and Its Future,” this is the final report of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), an ambitious two-year project conducted by IPI. The report identifies how the UN-based multilateral system can be made more “fit for purpose” for twenty-first century challenges. It comes as a new secretary-general prepares to take office and the wider public contemplates how to sustain our fragile global order in the face of the great and turbulent changes confronting it.

The ICM was launched in September 2014, with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as its chair and longtime Indian diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri as its secretary-general. In a highly consultative process, the ICM has involved more than 340 diplomats, UN officials, and civil society actors in retreats and meetings, and tens of thousands of people in person and online via public consultations.

The ICM’s final report suggests ten general principles to guide a revitalized multilateral system. It also makes concrete recommendations about how to address the specific challenges of our time across fifteen issue areas. This report will be followed by the release of fifteen issue-specific policy papers focused on each of these areas.

Read the report in French