Year XXXVII, Number 3, November 2024

Andreas Bummel
Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders

In September 2024, the United Nations convened a long awaited “Summit of the Future” at its headquarters in New York. While governments were still busy putting final touches on an official outcome document, the Pact for the Future, a platform of civil society groups released its own People’s Pact for the Future.

Published by the Coalition of the UN We Need (C4UN), the document “represents the culmination of nearly two years of work to articulate a set of recommendations, based on numerous civil society-led online, regional, and global consultations, to determine what participants agree is necessary for the United Nations to meet the needs of humanity and the planet today.”

Over 35 pages, the People’s Pact outlines numerous proposals in the areas covered by the summit and the intergovernmental outcome document: sustainable development and financing for development; international peace and security; science, technology, innovation and digital cooperation; children, youth and future generations; as well as transforming global governance.

The People’s Pact calls on the UN to recommit to the universal aspirations enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among other things, the civil society document points out that the international community “must shift models of governance” from “defending state-centrism” to “rebalancing decision-making to the local, national, regional, and global levels, under the principle of subsidiarity”.

Recommendations include the introduction of “innovative forms of global taxation and financial re-allocation to finance the Sustainable Development Goals” and the establishment of an International Court for the Environment. A meaningful reform of the UN Security Council would entail “the ultimate objective of abolishing the veto”. The role of the UN General Assembly should be strengthened “to prevent or respond to acts of aggression when the Security Council fails to do so”. The jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice should be expanded.

Strengthening the engagement of young people should be done “by expanding the UN Youth Delegates program, developing an intergenerational Town Hall, and further resourcing the UN Youth Office”. The document calls for “UN Mechanisms on Future Generations: a Special Envoy, a Council for Future Generations, and a Future Generations Fund.”

In the field on “transforming global governance”, the People’s Pact recommends the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly to “enhance global governance legitimacy and expand participation.” The new assembly should give “elected representatives, reflecting a broad political and societal spectrum, a formal voice and role at the UN that includes advisory and oversight functions.”

The document endorses “the participatory mechanism” of a UN World Citizens’ Initiative and says that the UN General Assembly in addition should “convene global citizens’ assemblies, composed of individuals selected by civic lottery and demographically representative of the global population, to deliberate and make recommendations on matters of global concern.”

The People’s Pact recognizes the need for a review of the UN Charter and recommends that a review conference “should be convened as a follow up to the Summit of the Future and commence as soon as possible.”

Democracy Without Borders was among the organizations involved in the consultations on the People’s Pact. We strongly welcomed the document’s bold approach and forward-thinking proposals. The People’s Pact represents an important reference now and in the future. At the same time, the official intergovernmental outcome document, the Pact for the Future, in many ways is a disappointment, in particular in the field of participation. While there is a paragraph expressing a commitment on the part of the UN to establish stronger partnerships with “relevant stakeholders”, there are no specific recommendations and follow up processes will be needed to identify what exactly is to be done.

Numerous civil society groups participated in the UN’s official consultations on the intergovernmental outcome document. In a joint statement published earlier in 2024, hundreds voiced concern that their input was being overlooked. Many feel that this has not changed despite the UN’s Civil Society Conference in May which was devoted to the summit and despite ongoing consultations on the outcome document’s various revisions. For a proposal to be inserted into the draft, it needed to be put forward by a UN Member State and accepted by consensus.

This is why calls for continued and meaningful follow up processes after the summit have been moving into the focus. In a submission to the co-facilitators of the intergovernmental negotiations, Democracy Without Borders, Iswe Foundation and Democracy International suggested that the Pact for the Future should mandate the UN Secretary-General to present recommendations on the UN’s engagement with parliamentary bodies as well as deliberative and participative mechanisms “based on open and inclusive consultations with relevant experts and stakeholders.”

In July, an open letter signed by dozens of former heads of state, released by C4UN and the Club de Madrid, noted that the Summit of the Future should “establish robust and accountable follow-up mechanisms in order to effectively revitalize global governance with the United Nations at its core.”

None of this materialized. Still, the Pact for the Future and its two annexes, a global digital compact and a declaration on future generations, offer hooks civil society organizations can use as reference points. Overall, however, the contrast between the intergovernmental Pact for the Future and the ambitious People’s Pact is a stark one. While the latter shows pathways and elements for meaningful changes in global governance, the former is a failure in this regard.