Keywords: WAPOR, Peace Polls, UN Sustainable Development Goals, Global Monitoring

Our WAPOR historian, Tom Smith (2024), tells us that our founders established WAPOR in 1947 after the Second World War to share research, set standards, and monitor global public opinion to prevent war. Sadly that effort came to an end in the early 1950s, at about the time of the Korean war when the talents of the Gallop franchise were needed again in support of war. Efforts were made to reverse this trend with the advent of ‘Deliberative Polling’ in the late 1980s and ‘Peace Polls’ first used to help resolve the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1990s.

Since then peace polls have been used with mixed success around the world most notably in keeping Macedonia out of the Balkan wars (Irwin 2020). Regrettably, peace poll projects in Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova/Transnistria, Sudan, Israel and Palestine, and Syria never reached their full potential. These efforts have either been ‘too little and too late’ or blocked by the ‘sides’ or interested third parties, most notably in Israel and Palestine with tragic results and a regional war (Irwin 2024). This paper reviews these failures and proposes a solution that builds on the original intent of WAPOR’s founders by renewing WAPOR’s relationship with the UN in the context of monitoring the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer provides us with a well-tested approach to tracking and monitoring human failure using a combination of attitudinal and sociometric questions. WAPOR members have piloted this approach for SDG2 Zero Hunger (Yashwant Deshmukh), SDG6 Clean water (Pablo Paras) and SDG16 Peace and Justice (Colin Irwin). Significantly public opinion polls can collect such data on demand and fill the gaps in national statistics. But tracking and monitoring all 17 SDGs is an enormous task. Where to start?

In 2024 the WAPOR Liaison Committee recommended WAPOR apply for ‘Consultative Status’ with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In this context WAPOR will be able to work with the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to establish global standers/questions for monitoring and tracking all 17 UNSDGs. These questions can then be used by WAPOR members, UN member states, regional and global barometers and UN organisations, with results published on a common website with free access for students, researchers and policy makers to meet the WAPOR objective of ‘benefit to humanity’ and the aspirations of WAPOR’s founders in 1947. Over time the costs of such work can be expected to fall through AI automation in accordance with UN AI standards (UN 2024).

References

Irwin, C. J., (2020) The People’s Peace Second Edition: Public Opinion, Public Diplomacy and World Peace, CreateSpace, Scotts Valley, CA.

Irwin, C. J. (2024) The Conversation. Available here: https://theconversation.com/profiles/colin-irwin-448522/articles

Smith, T. W., (2024) The Founding of WAPOR 1946-1948, 71st WAPOR Annual Conference, Seoul, South Korea, July 28-31.

UN AI Advisory Body (2024) Governing AI for Humanity, Final Report, September.