The following is an excerpt from an op-ed written by Adam Day and Harvard's Jo?lle Jenny on the
Speaking in Davos at the start of the year, United Nations Secretary-General Ant¨®nio Guterres laid out a vision of the interconnected nature of today¡¯s conflicts, calling for a ¡°comprehensive approach¡± by the UN that will bring together all of the organization¡¯s pillars. This is a good move for a deeply fractured organization. But in aiming big, and in focusing on bringing the major pieces of the UN architecture together, there is a risk that the crucial local dynamics of conflict will continue to be overlooked. Each of the key UN institutions ¨C peace and security, human rights, and development ¨C have a strong tendency to work at the national and state-institutional level. None has adequate mechanisms to link the national with the local. And while recent and Guterres himself have called for a , it is less clear how that will be achieved. Here are three direct ways to combat the tendency to focus on the national level and to firmly root the UN¡¯s conflict-management in local soil.
