Are ANY multilateral organisations based in emerging economies?

by | Jun 13, 2011


I found myself wondering today, as you do, whether I could think of any multilateral organisations based in emerging economies. I scratched my head for a long time. Couldn’t think of one. Scratched my head some more. Still zilch. In desperation, I turned to Twitter and posed the question there. Nope.

OK, UN Habitat and the UN Environment Program are both based in Kenya – but I’m not sure that it counts as emerging quite yet. And yes, I know that ASEAN is based in Jakarta and the Asian Development Bank in Manila – but given that they’re Asian organisations, it’s almost a given that they’d be based in an emerging economy. But genuinely global multilateral organisations? It looks like there’s not one in any of the emerging economies.

This is pretty astonishing, if true (and doubtless Richard Gowan will tell us if we’re overlooking something). How are emerging economies supposed to feel bought in to existing multilateral institutions if none of them are based there?

PS. An afterthought: As David and I mentioned in our recent think piece on the Rio 2012 sustainable development summit, we’re pretty unconvinced by the idea of creating a new World Environment Organisation, which we think would be a largely pointless exercise.

But if we do end up creating one at next year’s summit, then surely the case for it being based in an emerging economy – China or Brazil, probably – would be overwhelming. If you think about it, there would be a certain symbolism to it if the first multilateral organisation to be based in an emerging economy was the one charged with leading the world towards sustainable development.

Author

  • Alex Evans

    Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.

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