Rethinking Multilateral Governance: Securing Our Future

19th Tsai Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, social scientist and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations

In-person Event: RSVP Appreciated. 

Abstract: Humanity today faces a dangerous world of complexities and disruptions — deadly pandemics, a climate crisis, cyber insecurity, and protracted armed conflicts. These interconnected crises pose unprecedented threats to our existence, planet, and future amid eroded trust in political institutions, rising social divisions, ethnonationalism, and geopolitical rivalry. In conflict-ridden communities, civilians suffer atrocities as international humanitarian and human rights laws are cast aside in the absence of a robust mechanism of enforcement. At a time when productive dialogue for global solutions is critical, multilateral governance has been severely weakened, undermining our ability to address these global challenges effectively. 

The gravity of our historical moment demands serious rethinking to address these threats and to rebuild multilateral governance for the twenty-first century. This lecture hopes to contribute to this rethinking by drawing on the speaker's UN experiences, highlighting struggles and opportunities to restore and rebuild the power of transnational alliances and communities of shared values, purpose, and interest. It will discuss working with women who are leaders in the thought and practice of transforming societies, who dare to dive deep into the issues of power, changing the paradigm of peace and security resulting in the Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. It will also share my experience in the Asia-Pacific during the 2008 global financial crisis to rethink and implement new drivers of inclusive and sustainable development. The underlying theme is imagining a “people-centred multilateralism”, harnessing the power of individual and collective leadership to reshape power dynamics, secure our future, and allow humanity to flourish.

Biography of the speaker: 

Dr. Noeleen Heyzer was an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (2007-2015) and the first woman to serve as the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) since its founding in 1947. Responding to the 2008 global financial crisis, she developed ESCAP as the platform for the region to rethink and implement new drivers of inclusive and sustainable development. Before that,she was the first Executive Director outside North America to lead the United Nations Development Fund for Women (1994-2007). She was widely recognized for playing a critical role in the Security Council’s adoption and implementation of landmark Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace, and Security, undertaking numerous missions to conflict-affected areas worldwide. Dr. Heyzer served under four UN Secretary Generals (UNSG) and was the UNSG’s Special Adviser for Timor-Leste (2013-2015), working to support peacebuilding, state-building, and sustainable development. She was also a member of the UNSG’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation (2017-2021) and the UNSG’s Special Envoy for Myanmar (2021-2023). 

Prior to her career in the United Nations, Dr. Heyzer spent decades engaged in work on women and development in the Asia-Pacific region, encapsulated in her groundbreaking book, Working Women in South-east Asia: Development, Subordination and Emancipation (Open University Press, 1986).

A founding member of several international women’s networks, Dr. Heyzer served on numerous boards and advisory committees of international organizations, including the UNDP Human Development Report, the Board of Trustees of the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Governing Board of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (NUS), Board Member of the Asia Global Institute, the Kofi Annan Global Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age. She was also on the High-level Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding chaired by Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen, and a jury member of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Innovation Award for Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment 2010. 

Born and raised in Singapore, Dr. Heyzer was the top sociology student of her year, holding a Bachelor of Arts (Upper Hons.) and a Master of Science from the University of Singapore, and later a Doctorate in Social Sciences from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. She has received numerous international awards for leadership, including the Dag Hammarskjold Medal (2004) given to “a person who has promoted, in action and spirit, the values that inspired Dag Hammarskjöld as Secretary-General of the United Nations and generally in his life: compassion, humanism and commitment to international solidarity and cooperation”.

In her memoir, Beyond Storms and Stars (Penguin Books, 2021), she shares her story of growing up in childhood poverty and social disadvantage in post-war Singapore. Her personal struggles and her work with women at the grassroots in Asia-Pacific shaped her belief in harnessing the power of community agency, and made her a woman leader who fosters a more “people-centred multilateralism” to transform imbalanced structures of power.