Establishing Legitimacy at the UN

Review of UN University’s May 26th  Panel Discussion: Legitimacy and Civil Society “Without legitimacy” says Roland Rich , Executive of the United Nations Development Fund, “the UN is just another gathering.” But United Nation’s policy makers, academics, and regular folks like me and you don’t really know what legitimacy means. Further, no one’s quite sure how it grows, recedes, and where it hangs out. These questions have propelled the United Nations University , the UN’s “think tank”, to host a conference focused on defining the abstract concept of legitimacy so it can be chased with greater ease in the future. If, as Roland Rich has said, legitimacy is what makes the UN run, these questions aren’t meant to simply spark a friendly academic deb...