Late September is always the busiest time of the year at the United Nations headquarters, when world leaders arrive in New York for the high-level debate at the General Assembly. This year will not be as usual: the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, has taken this opportunity to call for the Summit of the Futurewhich will include world leaders, civil society pioneers and youth advocates.
There will be a series of panel discussions, keynote speeches and side events that will be broadly divided into five main themes, along with so-called “cross-cutting” themes such as human rights, the climate crisis and gender equality, which are relevant to all issues.
1 Financing for development
“The international financial architecture, created in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War, is being subjected to a stress test of historic proportions, and it is failing,” said the Secretary-General.
The need to reform the system has become more pressing in light of the imminent deadline for compliance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Developmentthe plan drawn up by the UN to build a better future.
The main outcome document of the Summit, known as the Pact for the Future, represents, according to Guterres, the commitment of nations to “use all the tools at their disposal globally to solve problems, before those problems overwhelm us”, and commit to taking “bold measures” to implement the Agenda, with special emphasis on ending hunger and poverty, reducing inequalities and increasing ambition to address climate change.
2 International peace and security
The UN has described the current global situation as “exceptionally dangerous”, with the risk of major powers coming into conflict at their highest levels since the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear war higher than in several decades, and the climate crisis driving migration and exacerbating tensions.
In addition, in a highly interconnected world, new threats must be faced as new technologies are weaponized to cause maximum damage.
Against this tense backdrop, a New Agenda for Peace was published in 2023, the first global peace plan drawn up by the UN in decades, outlining a series of solutions ranging from maintenance and consolidation of peace, up to disarmament and peace reforms Security Council.
The recommendations outlined in the New Agenda for Peace have been incorporated into the Pact for the Futureto be adopted at the Future Summit.
3 Science, Technology and Innovation and Digital Cooperation
UN Member States will also adopt the Global Digital Compactwhich seeks to inject more trust into the internet, ensure that people have more choice over how their data is used and highlight accountability for discriminatory and misleading content.
The Pact contains warnings about the consequences of artificial intelligence being used with malicious intent to deepen divisions within and between nations, increase insecurity, violate human rights and worsen inequality.
The document includes a list of commitments and actions, several of which mention The “digital divide”: 2.6 billion people have no access to the internetwhich deprives them of the opportunities offered by online tools. The Pact calls for all schools and hospitals to be online, based on the Giga Initiative supported by the UN, and that training in digital literacy be provided. An International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence and an Annual Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance will be established, and by 2030 the plan is to develop global standards on artificial intelligence that benefit everyone.
4 Youth and future generations
The third document to be adopted at the Summit will be the Declaration on Future Generations. In addition to the commitments to end inequality, achieve quality education for all and ensure long-term planning, the Declaration proposes a new addition to the international organization: a special envoy for Future Generations, who would be responsible for Advocate across the United Nations system for better long-term thinking and to share the conclusions of the Laboratory of Futures of the United Nations, the Organization’s research arm.
The voices of young people will complete the Summit: on Friday, September 20, the emblematic General Assembly will host a Day of Action led by young people, featuring activists, celebrities, musical performances and dialogues featuring Felipe Paullier, the first Under-Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, and António Guterres; and on Monday, 23 September, an interactive dialogue will take place in the Trusteeship Council Chamber on how to improve the global system for current and future generations.
5 Global governance
When the United Nations was created nearly 80 years ago, a shaken world was emerging from a global conflict so devastating that world leaders were prepared to erect institutions designed to ensure that nothing comparable would happen again.
While that impulse remains relevant today, There is a general consensus that the tools created at the beginning of the UN need a thorough review. to make them fit for purpose. At the Summit, world leaders will engage in discussions aimed at bringing about such changes and will raise the thorny issue of one such tool, which has sparked heated debate over the years: the Security Council reform of the UN.
There will also be a focus on outer space issues. In recent years, there have been calls to strengthen governance structures around these activities, as private sector use of space grows rapidly and new spacefaring nations join the ranks of established players.
Major intergovernmental initiatives are underway to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon, Credible programmes are underway to promote human spaceflight to Mars, and different concepts are being explored to extract resources from the Moon and the asteroid belt. New forms of governance are therefore needed to ensure that this rapid growth occurs safely and sustainably.
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