Concours d'Arbitrage International de Paris (CAIP) 2026

The post-1945 international order was built around a cluster of institutions — the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system, and a growing body of international law — designed to prevent another world war and to manage interdependence through cooperation. For several decades this architecture coexisted with decolonization, the Cold War, and the gradual expansion of human rights, development, and environmental regimes, culminating in landmark frameworks such as the 1992 Rio Declaration, the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, and the 2015 Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These instruments embedded the idea that peace, development, and ecological stability are inseparable, and that states share a common but differentiated responsibility for the planet's future. That consensus is now under significant strain. Overlapping crises — accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, food and energy insecurity, sovereign debt distress in the Global South, forced displacement, and the disruptive rise of artificial intelligence — have exposed deep gaps between the scale of global problems and the capacity of existing institutions to respond. The 2023 SDG Stocktake found that only around 15 percent of the Sustainable Development Goals are on track, while geopolitical rivalry between major powers, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and growing North–South frustration over financing and representation have eroded trust in multilateralism. The UN Secretary-General's 'Our Common Agenda' and the 2024 Pact for the Future attempted to relaunch reform, including of the Security Council, international financial architecture, and digital governance. The debate today is therefore less about whether global challenges exist than about how to govern them justly. Core disputes include the reform of multilateral development banks and debt relief for vulnerable economies; operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund agreed at COP27 and COP28; equitable access to vaccines, technology, and critical minerals for the energy transition; the regulation of AI and cross-border data flows; and the protection of human rights and the rule of law in an era of rising authoritarianism. Delegates are asked to consider how legal and institutional tools can address these 'roots of the future' so that resilience is not the privilege of the few but a shared global condition.