UN Summit of the Future: too much at stake to waste
The world is undergoing a cascade of crises, and the upcoming United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future offers a crucial opportunity to address them through increased civil society participation in decision-making. But despite civil society’s efforts to push for significant change, the draft Pact for the Future to be adopted at the Summit lacks the ambition needed to drive change and ensure accountability for commitments. The UN’s crucial human rights pillar remains underfunded. The UN the world needs – one that puts people and human rights at its centre – will only be achieved if it opens up more spaces for civil society influence and citizen participation.
If there’s anyone working to make a better future, it’s civil society. Take the climate movement, which has taken to the streets – and parliaments, courts and extraction sites – in the name of the rights of future generations. You’d think civil society would be given a central role in any international process aimed at finding better ways of working together to meet the challenges of the future. But sadly, this isn’t the case.
The Summit of the Future, taking place on 22 and 23 September at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, is part of an effort to strengthen cooperation to realise the aspirations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and numerous international treaties and conventions, including the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2030 Agenda, which sets out the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are just a few years left to achieve these ambitious goals, but they’re mostly badly off track. The Summit is supposed to breathe new life into the 2030 Agenda and strengthen the UN’s weakest pillar, human rights.
At the Summit, states will agree on three outcome documents: the Pact for the Future, an action-oriented document seeking to address global challenges through a multilateral, rights-based approach, and two annexes, the Global Digital Compact – outlining principles, goals and actions to bridge digital, data and innovation divides – and a Declaration on Future Generations.
The major focus in the run-up to the Summit has been the development of the Pact, which will include commitments in five areas: sustainable development and financing for development, international peace and security, science, technology and innovation, youth and future generations, and transforming global governance.
Although they’re always relegated to the back of the queue in the UN’s state-centric processes, civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists have approached the Summit process with cautious optimism. They’ve engaged in every possible way and made valuable contributions to the Pact’s successive drafts. They’ve pushed for the opening of new spaces for civil society influence. But views on the process are mixed at best, and it isn’t clear how much the outcomes will reflect civil society contributions and offer entry points for further advocacy.
A two-year process
Although it will occupy just two days at the start of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly’s 79th session, the Summit has been in the works for at least two years. It was first proposed as part of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Our Common Agenda report in 2021, and states agreed to convene it in 2022. They determined the scope of the Pact at a ministerial meeting in September 2023, and its drafting process began that November.
Two states have co-facilitated the consultations and negotiations on each outcome document: Germany and Namibia for the Pact, Sweden and Zambia for the Global Digital Compact and Jamaica and the Netherlands for the Declaration on Future Generations.
Based on written submissions from civil society and other stakeholders, including academia and the private sector, the co-facilitators prepared initial drafts of each outcome document, circulated in early 2024. Each was then subject to successive reviews. After a new draft was published, co-facilitators held virtual consultations where stakeholders could advocate for stronger language.
The most heated debates took place around the Pact. The first draft lacked the ambition needed. It contained only one mention of the role of civil society and nothing about civic space, despite the fact that growing restrictions on fundamental freedoms are a major obstacle to achieving the SDGs.
Midway through the negotiation process, in May 2024, the UN hosted a civil society conference in Nairobi, Kenya, so civil society could contribute ideas to the Summit. The conference, also attended by co-facilitators and other states, encouraged civil society to form coalitions around areas of common interest. Although negotiations on the Pact had already been underway for three months, civil society sought to use the space to advocate for commitments on their areas of concern, from climate to gender justice. To ensure their voices were heard, larger CSOs ensured the presence of members of the groups they work for. Save the Children, for example, supported the participation of children from six African countries. This should have been a given in a process aimed at shaping the future – but it was a rare exception, with children systematically excluded from the decision-making processes that affect their lives.
Civil society access
International institutions are fundamentally intergovernmental. Only states have decision-making powers, and while civil society has varying degrees of influence in a myriad of institutions, mechanisms and processes, its overall say is limited. The process leading up to the Summit has disappointingly been no different.
At the beginning of the process, civil society called for the establishment of an open, participatory and inclusive process. The UNMute Civil Society Initiative, supported by over 300 CSOs from around the world and numerous states, reiterated its call for the UN to open up participation through information and communication technologies, and to organise hybrid meetings to broaden access. As part of this, it stressed the need to work to narrow the digital divide between the global north and south, and across gender, class, rural-urban and other divides. The campaign proposed changes to UN procedures to give civil society representatives the opportunity and time to provide input, attend meetings and participate in negotiations.
But the Summit process was less inclusive than hoped. While many states claimed to value civil society, few governments consulted their own civil society ahead of negotiations – and some authoritarian governments questioned the legitimacy of civil society participation in UN processes.
There were virtual briefings and consultations, but civil society pointed out that these were only held in English, excluding many. They took place on US Eastern time, excluding those in Asia and Oceania. And their format only allowed for a series of short statements rather than real dialogue.
Nevertheless, civil society tried to make the most of the opportunities. CSOs gathered the perspectives of those they exist to serve and brought them to the table. They provided feedback through written submissions and sought to strengthen the Pact’s language. And because they don’t want to fight for inclusion on an ad hoc basis, they continued to insist on systematic practices of civil society participation in all UN processes and mechanisms.
But in a state-centred process, CSOs had to lobby states to advocate on their behalf. Negotiations were opaque: in the case of the Pact and the Global Digital Compact, civil society couldn’t even observe discussions and had to rely on friendly states for any information about what was going on. It was able to observe the negotiations on the Declaration on Future Generations – but these were less consequential, as a declaration has lesser status in terms of setting international norms. Limited influence where it mattered means that civil society’s most ambitious proposals are unlikely to be included in Summit outcome texts.
Civil society demands
For civil society, the process towards the Summit represented an opportunity to push for stronger commitments on human rights, social justice and the environment.
Voices from the frontline: focus on children’s rights
Julie Murray is Advocacy Advisor at Save the Children International, a global organisation advocating for children’s rights and interests worldwide.
We are pushing for more substantive language on children, particularly in the sustainable development chapter. Across UN negotiations, there has been some resistance to recognise children’s rights. However, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty. Meeting children’s needs today is crucial to fulfilling their rights tomorrow. We hope states recognise this.
Children make up about a third of the world’s population. With the escalation of war, violence and the climate crisis, the fulfilment of their rights is more urgent than ever. At Save the Children, our priority is to ensure these rights are mainstreamed throughout the three outcome documents.
We must invest in public services for the children of today and tomorrow. This requires reform of the international financial architecture to ensure all countries can finance climate resilience and adaptation measures, child protection, education, health and other essential services. Children must also be protected from violence. Every year, a billion children face physical, emotional and sexual abuse. They are growing up in a rapidly evolving digital world that was not designed for them, so we must ensure their rights and safety offline and online.
Children have the right to participate in decisions that affect them, as stated in article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They are key stakeholders here, as they are the generation closest to future generations. So we have engaged children in virtual Children’s Assemblies to gather their priorities and will release a Children’s Pact for the Future. We have detailed our position in two policy briefs: ‘Realizing Intergenerational Justice for Children and Future Generations’ and ‘Fulfilling the Rights of Children, With Children, Today and Tomorrow’.
It remains to be seen whether children’s rights will be meaningfully included in the pact. There has been much back and forth on this issue. Progress has been made in the chapters on peace and security and youth and future generations, but negotiations aren’t over yet. The Global Digital Compact is progressive on children’s digital rights, and the Declaration on Future Generations is strong on ensuring an environment that upholds children’s rights, despite debates about whether children are ‘critical agents of change,’ as stated in the 2030 Agenda.
This is an edited extract of our conversation with Julie. Read the full interview here.
Voices from the frontline: focus on women’s rights
Jennifer Rauch, Global Advocacy Officer at Fòs Feminista, a global feminist organisation that promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world.
Unfortunately, the pact does not have a chapter dedicated to gender equality, so in each version of the pact we have pushed for a cross-cutting gender lens in all five chapters. Our recommendations focused on integrating a human rights-based approach to health and gender equality, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, universal health coverage, inclusive and quality education and protection from sexual and gender-based violence.
We also advocated for disaggregated data on gender equality, the empowerment of women, girls and gender-diverse people and the reaffirmation of human rights instruments such as the International Conference on Population Development’s Programme of Action and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
As a feminist organisation, we have also called for stronger language on civil society participation, particularly for feminist and youth-led organisations, ensuring that historically and structurally excluded groups are prioritised and truly not left behind. Overall, we have advocated for a pact based on human rights and gender equality principles, to ensure the summit helps achieves the SDGs and holds governments accountable to their prior commitments.
Fortunately, many of the issues that we advocate for, such as sexual and reproductive health and rights, the prevention of gender-based violence and the empowerment of women and girls, have been included in the most recent version of the pact. But it is one thing is to have them mentioned, and another to have member states make strong commitments to achieve these goals.
Initially, our ambition was high, but as negotiations went on, we began to temper our expectations. We hoped for more ambitious and progressive language related to gender and human rights, but contentious topics such as gender-transformative approaches to climate change, sexual and reproductive health and rights and the eradication of poverty were watered down. However, we remain hopeful that our ally states will continue to push for progressive and gender-equal language.
This is an edited extract of our conversation with Jennifer. Read the full interview here.
Voices from the frontline: focus on LGBTQI+ rights
Ophelia Kemigisha is UN Program Officer at Outright International, a global organisation that works to improve LGBTQI+ rights around the world.
LGBTQI+ people aren’t looking for special treatment – we just want to be recognised as having equal dignity and rights. We are people with disabilities, from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, of different ages, with different jobs and families. We want a pact with inclusive language that reflects and respects our diversity.
In the sustainable development chapter, we focus on the elimination of discrimination to ensure social protection and employment opportunities are available to all. We advocate for the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people in economic growth policies, recognising that metrics such as GDP often overlook human wellbeing and sustainability. We must think about development more broadly. We urge global financial institutions to uphold human rights standards and address discrimination in their practices. Sustainable development must go hand in hand with inclusion.
When it comes to peace and security, we want to ensure LGBTQI+ people are included in conflict prevention measures. We also strive for the eradication of gender-based violence against women, transgender people and anyone who doesn’t conform to heterosexual patriarchal norms. Peace is not just the absence of war, and the pact should reflect the fact that people’s bodies are sites of struggle.
In the area of technology, we promote regional cooperation to develop inclusive digital literacy programmes that ensure LGBTQI+ people have internet access. We also want to ensure online spaces are safe for all and LGBTQI+ people are protected from surveillance and harassment.
In the chapter on youth and future generations, we push for young LGBTQI+ people to be included in decision-making processes at all levels so their voices are heard in shaping their future and that of future generations.
In global governance, we advocate for a system based on trust, cooperation, decolonisation, interdependence and distributed power. We stress the importance of strengthening international human rights obligations to prevent states flouting them.
Overall, we advocate for the protection of human rights in their entirety, creating an environment that is truly inclusive and supportive of all people.
This is an edited extract of our conversation with Ophelia. Read the full interview here.
Civil society also put forward major cross-cutting demands, starting with recognition of civil society’s key roles in struggles for peace, democracy, inclusion, justice and accountability. From the point of view of the SDGs, civil society has made clear it’s needed both to implement the goals and ensure resources aren’t misused.
But the conditions that enable civil society to play its full range of roles are steadily deteriorating. As shown by the CIVICUS Monitor, our collaborative research initiative surveying the state of civic space around the world, just over two per cent of people now live in countries where civic space is open – where the fundamental freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly are respected – while over 85 per cent live in countries with serious civic space restrictions. This means people are finding it increasingly hard to organise, speak out and mobilise for economic, political and social change. These trends are also playing out at the UN, where as many as 40 states have recently meted out reprisals against people and organisations for cooperating with UN bodies and mechanisms.
That’s why in the run-up to the Summit, civil society sought strong commitments to protect and expand civic space, a prerequisite for civil society to be able to seek any change. Civil society also wants the UN to start with itself – by recognising civil society’s roles within UN systems and reforming institutions to align with the principles outlined in the UN Charter. This isn’t only a matter of democracy and inclusion, but also of effectiveness: without full civil society participation, global governance institutions are sure to keep falling short of their potential.
Proposals for global governance reform
The UN, for all its flaws, is a landmark achievement in global cooperation. Born out of the ashes of the Second World War, its Charter sets out four crucial aspirations in the name of ‘We the Peoples’: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, dignity and equality, establish the conditions for justice under international law and promote social progress and better living standards.
Yet in the face of multiple, intersecting crises, including violent conflict, egregious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, staggering inequality and accelerating climate change, the UN’s impact is hamstrung by rivalries among powerful states and the limitations of state-centric ways of working. Civil society has ideas to change this.
Voices from the frontline: focus on global governance reform
Renzo Pomi represents Amnesty International at the UN in New York.
Our proposals covered issues from Security Council reform to increased civil society participation in the UN.
We have long argued that Security Council permanent members should refrain from vetoing or blocking credible resolutions on serious violations such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Unfortunately, this proposal is not accurately reflected on the draft. States may at the end agree to expand the Security Council, but otherwise most of the language simply reaffirms existing commitments, such as Article 27.3 of the Charter, which prevents states involved in conflicts voting on related resolutions but is currently ignored.
We also highlighted that CSOs face several barriers to engaging with the UN. The Economic and Social Council’s NGO Committee, which reviews applications for consultative status, often acts as a gatekeeper, unfairly denying access to CSOs that challenge the positions of particular states. We have proposed dismantling this committee and setting up an independent expert mechanism to assess applications on the basis of merit rather than political considerations. However, this proposal is unlikely to be included in the Pact’s final draft.
This is an edited extract of our conversation with Renzo. Read the full interview here.
The UNMute Civil Society initiative makes five calls to improve civil society participation in UN processes: using digital technologies to broaden participation and inclusion, bridging the digital divide by focusing on connectivity for the most excluded, changing procedures and practices to ensure effective and meaningful interaction and participation at all stages, creating an annual civil society action day as an opportunity to stocktake and assess progress on civil society participation and appointing a UN civil society envoy.
The relatively modest proposal of a designating a civil society champion within the UN could serve as a first step in enabling further progress. Over the years, UN secretary-generals have created various envoy roles to signal that an issue is important and help coordinate action across the UN. A civil society envoy could, among other things, promote best practices in civil society participation across the UN, ensure that a diverse range of civil society is involved in the UN’s work and promote the UN’s engagement with civil society groups around the world.
On top of supporting the idea of a UN civil society envoy, the We the Peoples campaign, backed by over 200 CSOs and more than 100 parliamentarians from around the world, proposes the introduction of a World Citizens’ Initiative to allow people to mobilise to collect signatures to put an issue on the UN agenda. This mechanism could ensure that issues that demonstrate a high level of global public support are considered, including during the high-level General Assembly opening week and in the Security Council. It would make it easier for the UN to focus on pressing issues – and give added weight to the efforts of states pushing for progress – while encouraging people to identify with the UN as they see it as an institution that can take up and embody their concerns.
Another proposal is to establish a UN Parliamentary Assembly to complement the General Assembly and give a voice to citizens as well as governments. This could serve as a corrective to state-centric decision-making and a source of scrutiny and accountability for the decisions the UN makes – or fails to make.
Last but not least, as time approaches for the selection of a new UN Secretary-General, civil society is mobilising the 1 for 8 billion campaign, pushing for an open, transparent, inclusive and merit-based selection process that reflects the UN’s ideals and provides for appropriate input from civil society. Civil society’s proposals are realistic, in that they don’t require an amendment to the Charter, but they’re ambitious. They boil down to limiting the position to a single, non-renewable term, ensuring multiple candidates are presented to the General Assembly to choose from and eliminating backroom deals.
These are all just steps towards making the global governance system more open, democratic and accountable. They’re not magic bullets, but they should be the start of a journey.
The future starts now
Civil society approached the Summit process with caution, unsure whether it would lead to real action. It seemed too similar to previous multi-stakeholder processes that had failed to deliver, with the danger of its end result being yet another aspirational document, lacking clear implementation and accountability mechanisms.
Regrettably, civil society’s fears have so far been justified. With its level of influence depending on the political will of states to adopt its proposals and advance its agenda, it simply isn’t being heard enough.
But civil society still isn’t giving up. Two Action Days will take place immediately before the Summit, providing additional physical and virtual spaces for multi-stakeholder conversations, and these will continue throughout the Summit – and for once, all CSOs, not just those with UN accreditation, will be able to register and participate.
Civil society will continue to push for clear and strong commitments, accompanied by implementation strategies and accountability mechanisms. It will continue to try to get the issues that matter into the outcome documents. It will then find creative ways to use any supportive language as wedges to open up space for further change. And it will strive to keep the outcome documents alive by pushing for implementation and holding governments to account on their commitments.
If there’s any hope for the Summit and the Pact to make a difference, it will only materialise if states listen to civil society.
OUR CALLS FOR ACTION
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In finalising the Pact for the Future and other outcome documents, states should avoid merely repackaging existing commitments and watering down language, and instead produce texts that are forward looking, innovative and specific.
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Democratic states should push for proper balance between the UN’s three pillars – human rights, peace and security and sustainable development – by evening out budgetary allocations and expanding civil society’s role across the system.
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The UN should introduce reforms to enable civil society’s participation, starting with the appointment of a UN civil society envoy to mainstream civil society participation in UN processes.
For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org
Cover photo by EvaManhartAPA/AFP via Getty Images