The UN Summit of the Future: Part 1

THE OUTCOME DOCUMENT: “PACT FOR THE FUTURE”

Introduction

In September, 2021, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, published a report, “Our Common Agenda”, on how Member States could respond better to current and future challenges. One recommendation was for a UN Summit of the Future, which was eventually held in September, 2024.

In an article published in Compass, the Journal of the Association of Professional Futurists, in August 2024 in the run-up to the Summit, I argued, among other things, that the Summit needed a high profile, that quality leadership needed to come to the fore and that publics worldwide needed to be engaged.    

In the first of three blogs on the Summit and its aftermath, I shall review what was agreed at the Summit – the outcome document “Pact for the Future” adopted by world leaders.

Prior to the Summit, the Pact had gone through a number of drafts. The initial draft tended to be exhortatory, and while the first revision had a more active tone, there was still not enough on how problems were going to be solved. What made it through to the Final Draft and how did it measure up? The following is a brief assessment of what seemed to me to be the most important points.

Pact for the Future

An introductory section was added stating that humanity faced a choice between a future of persistent crisis and breakdown or a breakthrough to a better and more sustainable future and that “we resolve to set ourselves on that [latter] path.”  

Such synoptic statements are important, but there was no mention of any destination that must be reached. Furthermore, the overall implementation of the Pact will only be reviewed in 2028.

Proposals on the reform of the UN Security Council were included, but were limited to agreement on guiding principles on equitable representation and increase in membership, further negotiations on the future of the veto and consideration of a review clause to ensure that the Security Council remains fit for purpose over time.  

The Pact acknowledges that the multilateral system needs to be reinvigorated. There should be greater co-operation between the UN and regional, sub-regional and other organisations. There should be stronger communication between UN intergovernmental bodies and civil society. Strategic foresight is explicitly mentioned as one of the tools to achieve a more agile, responsive and resilient UN.

The Pact recognises that to deal with climate change finance will have to be significantly scaled up to accelerate adaptation and build resilience in developing countries including additional grant-based and highly concessional finance. Efforts will continue to reform the inequities in the international financial architecture. The voice and representation of the developing countries will be strengthened, as will links between the United Nations and international financial institutions. Reform at multilateral development banks will be necessary to mobilise additional financing for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries.

The Pact acknowledges the need to address the underlying drivers of violence and displacement. It suggests that the role of preventive diplomacy should be maintained and the role of early warning systems strengthened. It recognises the importance of peace-building at national level, and, for instance, has agreed to ensure adequate financing for African Union-led peace operations.  

However, a section on climate change as a cause of conflict has been removed. Proposals on lethal autonomous weapons have been weakened to deciding to advance with urgency discussions on lethal autonomous weapon systems as opposed to the proposal in the first revision which agreed to conclude by 2026 a legally binding instrument to prohibit autonomous weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human control.

And the High Level Advisory Board set up by the UN Secretary-General to make proposals on effective multilateralism had published its report, “A Breakthrough for People and Planet” in April, 2024. It had called for a strengthening of governance for current and emerging transnational risks – including climate change, pandemics, biological weapons, artificial intelligence and transnational organised crime. Yet the Pact only requests the Secretary-General to:

“Consider approaches to strengthen the United Nations system response to complex global shocks, within existing authorities and in consultation with Member States, that … does not duplicate the response of … relevant United Nations … entities and mechanisms, and specialised agencies mandated to respond to emergencies …”(1)

All references to convening emergency platforms even for finite periods to deal with such situations have gone altogether in the Pact’s final draft. References elsewhere in the Pact to improving processes to deal with biological risks and assessing risks associated with artificial intelligence are similarly mild.

Conclusions

All in all, too many of the weaknesses of the earlier drafts remained. While there are a lot more particulars in the sections on nuclear weapons, disarmament obligations and commitments, and the threats to peace from emerging technologies, this seems to obscure what needs to be done rather than illuminate it.

It’s as if the nearer the final text came the more desperate the attempt to get more in as though you could hector your way to the future. Instead, the life of the Pact gets drowned in a sea of unnecessary verbiage and detail. A lot of action seems to have gone into the wording of the Pact, which is now half as long again as revision 1, as though that were the end in itself. Yet with so many contributors to take into consideration the Pact itself was going to be bound by the needs of diplomacy: what mattered far more were the words exchanged by the participants during the summit itself and the real-world action that resulted.

In the next blog, I shall review what happened at the Summit itself.

REFERENCE

(1) UNITED NATIONS, “Pact for the Future, Global Digital Compact, and Declaration on Future Generations”, September, 2024, Section V. Transforming global governance, Action 54, paragraph 82a, p. 38.

Written by Tony Diggle, SAMI Associate. He wrote a more detailed assessment of the UN Summit of the Future in three articles which were published in the June 2024, August 2024 and March 2025 issues of “Compass”, the Journal of the Association of Professional Futurists. He writes in a personal capacity.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.

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