GF bemærker: The Pact for the Future

(EN) Yesterday, Sunday the 22nd of September, the Pact for the Future with its two annexes The Global Digital Compact and the Declaration of Future Generations, was adopted by consensus at the opening of the Summit of the Future in New York. It marked the culmination of 18 months of intense negotiations, with diplomatic drama up until the very last minute. Although a great part of the Pact for the Future’s strong content has been watered down in the final version, the pact re-affirms the Member States commitments to vital international agreements.

The adoption of all three documents re-affirms commitments to the Paris Agreement, the 2030-declaration, the Addis Abeba Action Agenda, the Beijing declaration, with full consensus. And it outlines key areas for the UN to strengthen the institution making it more representative, transparent and accountable.  Here is Global Focus preliminary remarks on the Pact for the Future: 

We are happy that the UN’s Human Rights pillar is strengthened 

With only 5% of the UN’s budget allocated for the human rights pillar, both financial and normative strengthening has been much needed. Commitments to this were strong in the first version of the Pact but unfortunately faced severe pressure during the negotiations from a well-coordinated group of countries. The same goes for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, women, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. However, the Pact includes references to ensuring the protection of civil society engaged in protecting human rights against intimidation and reprisals (action 76, 74a), supporting the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (action 46, 74a), and several references to upholding international human rights law throughout the text. With this, the Pact has succeeded in protecting core Human Rights elements. We look forward to seeing how Denmark can support this work to an even greater extent leveraging it across the UN and in its foreign and development policy.

We see great opportunity in reforming the Security Council 

The Pact includes new and groundbreaking language on reforming the Security Council to be “representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable“ (action 39). A reform, which sets to “redress the historical injustice against Africa” as a clear priority, which the USA backed just a few weeks ago announcing the support of expanding the council with two permanent African seats. Even though the Pact does not hold paragraphs on how and when the reform shall take place, or what it should look like, the negotiations will continue in the so-called Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform (IGN), the Pacts has is committing to – and framing – the background and opportunities for a just reform. With an upcoming Danish non-permanent seat in the Security Council (2025-2026) and having a reform of the council as one of the priorities, we see great opportunity in Denmark utilizing the bridgebuilding role to actively support a progressive reform.

We will keep an eye on financing sustainable development and reforming the architecture for it  

One of the biggest wins of the Pact for the Future is the six strong paragraphs on reforming the international financial architecture (action 47-52). It has also been one of the biggest negotiation hassles on representation in the decision-making bodies, channeling resources to both climate financing and SDGs, and on which terms the resources will be provided. In the Pact, Member States have committed to actions on strengthening representation (48), closing the SDG financing gap (49), improving sustainable borrowing (50), supporting a stable financial system (51), and meeting the challenge of climate change (52). Additionally, an action on developing a framework to go beyond GDP is also part of the Pact (53) adding to the need of re-defining the economic system to ensure sustainable development for people and the planet. With a persistent need to finance the 2030-agenda to reach the SDGs and ensure additional funding for climate action, adaptation, and loss and damages, we will keep a close eye on Global North countries' commitments to this.

We are concerned about the role and rights of civil society  

The inclusion of civil society in the negotiations leading to the Summit of the Future has been under great pressure from a small, but consistent, group of countries – and so has the language promoting the importance of civil society’s meaningful inclusion across the UN in the negotiations. In the Pact for the Future, the protection of civic space in societies (action 13, 34b) and the role of civil society in peace building (action 44, 72b) are one of the strongest references, but no references are made to the diversity of civil society e.g. activists, social movements, human rights defenders etc. With Denmark as an important champion of civil society and supporter of an inclusive Summit of the Future, we will continue to work on the #UNmute initiative and beyond to ensure that the implementation of the Pact is committed to ensuring civil society’s rights and role.  

We are missing a vision for digital peace and security 

With the Global Digital Compact delimited specifically to "the non-military domain," (4) we are missing a clear pathway for advancing into a peaceful and secure digital future. While the Pact indeed refers to risks of misuse of emerging technologies, and specifically to the need for assessing risks related to military application of artificial intelligence, key paragraphs were removed before adopting the text of the Pact. Missing from the adopted text is a previous affirmation that international law is essential for maintaining "an open, secure, stable, accessible and peaceful information and communications technology environment." Also missing is an earlier commitment to preserve and protect critical civilian infrastructure from digital attacks.

Civil society will continue to push to ensure the full commitment

With the adoption of the three outcomes of the Summit, the difficult dynamics of the many past months have for a few moments been replaced with a slight relief. Yesterday’s session showed that the UN – even in extremely difficult times – can re-commit to the charter and come to agreement on a framework for the future of the institution providing a glimpse of hope for the Secretary-General's aim of reinvigorating global trust. However, it depends on the Member States to ensure the full commitment of the documents – adding to the existing international commitments, which civil society continues to push for. Global Focus will continue to follow this and will provide an extended analysis, including on the Global Digital Compact, after the General Assembly high-level week has concluded.

Download Global Focus preliminary remarks here: