The Summit for the Future took place on September 22nd – 23rd, 2024 at the UN Headquarters in New York, with the aim of uniting global leaders to tackle critical challenges such as climate change, digital governance, and sustainable development. The summit sought to establish a Pact for the Future, which includes initiatives like a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations, emphasising the need for renewed international cooperation.
Civil society organisations contributed to shaping the discussions leading up to the summit. During the UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, they expressed concerns about the inadequacies of existing multilateral institutions in effectively addressing global crises.
Read below insights from Mary T. Yelenick, PCI Board Member and Main Representative at the UN in New York, providing further perspective on these discussions:
“The Summit of the Future is an acknowledgment by the global community that escalating crises in the world are not being sufficiently addressed. Active warfare, being conducted with impunity, is ravaging global communities. Women across the globe continue to be marginalized and subject to widespread physical assault. Young people are being denied the basics needed to grow to healthy adulthood: food, shelter, safety, and education. The climate crisis is undeniable. Entire communities are on the move globally, forced to depart their ravaged homelands in search of food and security. And yet these global migrants, responding to forces beyond their control, are all too frequently scapegoated, and denied safe haven.
And while the United Nations exists as a forum for global cooperation and response, its structures — including the nature and composition of the Security Council — are rooted in an outmoded system, rooted in the past, which privileges a few while denying access and power to others. The world is crying out for change. And that change can only come from a clear-eyed recognition that power dynamics, global dispute resolution, and the ways that we treat each other must evolve, if the young people of the world are to have any real future.”
