UN Summit Analysis

PEACE CHILD INTERNATIONAL UN’s SUMMIT of the FUTURE

ANALYSIS 25th September 2024

Peace Child has been involved in several key UN events, from the 1986 International Year of Peace, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the 1995 UN 50th Anniversary to the Rio+5, +10 and +20 meetings. The 2024 Summit of the Future is the most recent of these, so it may be instructive for participants in future UN events to review its 5-year gestation and how it produced its Pact for the Future along with 2 Annexes: a Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations. This Analysis looks back to assess first, the official Government Road to the Summit; then Civil Society’s pathway and, finally, Peace Child International’s own journey to what, for the UN at least, was a landmark political moment.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF UN MEMBER STATE ROAD TO THE SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE: •

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The Announcement: Secretary-General, António Guterres, had wanted to celebrate the UN’s 75th Anniversary in 2020 – but the UN’s Member Governments had no appetite for celebration. So – he conducted a “Global Conversation” – which happened mostly online as the World was in the midst in the Covid crisis. (Peace Child contributed the Online 75 th Anniversary Festival in London.) From this consultation with over 1.5 million people, the S-G developed “Our Common Agenda” which called for “A Summit of the Future” to agree on Actions that would deliver “stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system, anchored within the United Nations.” Guterres called the Summit a “once-in-a-generation chance to change the course of history,” – adding: “The choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in BREAKDOWN or BREAKTHROUGH to a greener, better, safer future. The choice is ours to make.”

Young People and Civil Society were encouraged to contributed ideas – so we did.

The Rationale: In his Press Statement, S-G Guterres said that the Summit would enable the current generation of peacebuilders to address challenges not visible when the UN was created 80 years ago. “International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them,” he added. “We see out-of-control geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond. Runaway climate change. Runaway inequalities and debt.

Runaway development of new technologies like artificial intelligence – without guidance or guardrails. And our institutions simply can’t keep up which is no great surprise as those institutions were born in a bygone era for a bygone world. Global institutions and frame-works are today totally inadequate to deal with these complex existential challenges.” UN US-G, Guy Ryder, who led the Summit process, feels it “can render the UN and the multilateral system more effective, participatory and networked.” That is its rationale.

The Delay: Some UN Member Governments were initially sceptical about the Summit. Some even wanted it cancelled. Initially scheduled for September 2023, it would have clashed with the SDG Summit so the Secretariat moved it to September 2024 – which gave us all longer to prepare. To set guidelines for the Summit, the UN organised a Ministerial Meeting on 21

September 2023 – at which Ministers from over 100 Member states set out their country’s goals for the Summit.

• Zero Drafts & Revisions: Two Member States – one from the Global North, one from the Global South, were appointed as Co-facilitators (cofacs!) for each of the outcome documents of which there were three: – The Pact for the Future (Cofacs: Germany and Namibia) – The Digital Compact (Cofacs: Sweden and Zambia) – The Declaration on Future Generations (Cofacs: Kingdom of the Netherlands and Jamaica) The Cofacs generated a Zero Draft document from numerous contributions by member states and civil society organisations like Peace Child. We all them commented on the Zero Drafts – and that process went back and forth through three revisions to the Final Draft.

• Adoption: following some last minute, manoeuvring by the PGA (President of the General Assembly) to agree a “No Action” decision on a Russian Amendment which basically sought to undermine the agreement, the Final Draft was adopted by consensus at the UN General Assembly with ministers and Heads of State present on Sunday 22 nd September 2024.

CIVIL SOCIETY PATHWAY TO THE SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE: •

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People’s Pact for the Future Preparation: Building on the UN75 Global Conversation and Our Common Future, C4UN, led by Bahai International’s Dan Perell, developed a Civil Society process designed to deliver input to the Summit’s Pact for the Future by creating a People’s Pact. This was done by appointing youth and elder co-facilitators for different thematic tracks – each of which conducted a series of online consultations with different experts and interested parties. The Track Leaders gathered these comments into draft documents to be discussed at a Global Futures Forum held at the Church Centre in New York in March 2022.

Global Futures Forum(GFF): Over 200 civil society delegates met at the GFF and agreed an Interim People’s Pact – which was then written up and circulated by Dan Perell to the different stakeholders. Because the Summit was delayed, it was supposed to be updated by Civil Society over the 18 months remaining before the Summit. In the event, there was no further elaboration and Dan Perell announced in March 2023 that the Interim Draft had now become the Final Draft. Not an ideal process!

London Regional Meeting: One of the ideas that came up at the GFF was that there should be regional meetings in every UN Member State Capital to discuss the Pact for the Future and its Annexes. So – Peace Child International, UNA-UK and other groups put together a Regional Meeting in London – which was addressed by Charlotte Capstick, head of the UN Desk at the FCDO and other experts from different NGOs, like Save the Children and the Berlin-based Berghof Foundation. Like the People’s Pact process, the meeting was intentionally intergenerational, and youth from various UNA’s and elsewhere came together to provide the FCDO with their ideas for the Summit. The main purpose of the meeting was to engage the FCDO in a follow-up process for the ImPACT Coalitions – which it has yet to fulfil.

FCDO Drop-in Calls: Every two weeks, Charlotte hosted a zoom call with interested Civil Society partners to update us all on progress with member state negotiations of the different tracks of the Pact for the Future. These were a very useful chance for Civil Society to raise concerns about what the Pact did, and did not, include: there was particular concern on several of the Conversations about Gender and SRH issues – which also came up at the London Regional Meeting as key omissions in the Pact.

Cardiff Conference: Wales is the only country in the world to have a Future Generations Commissioner. Set up by the Welsh Well-being Act in 2015, following a nationwide canvas of views, it is an autonomous body, funding by the Welsh Government, that future proofs every piece of legislation that comes before the Senedd. It is a working example of “anticipatory Governance” so had contributed a lot to the UN’s Declaration on Future Generations. The Cardiff Conference was an Intergenerational effort to fashion a Welsh Protocol designed to implement the UN’s Declaration – covering every stakeholder from local government ( - we

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heard great stories from Oxford and Glamorgan Councils) – business (we heard from Arup partners) – national government and UN agencies. Part-funded by the FCDO and the UNESCO Bridges project, it was an excellent chance to air different opinions on how the UN Declaration might spread futures thinking around the world.

Nairobi CSC: The UN Dept. for Global Communications and C4UN led this process and appointed the excellent young Indian researcher, Nudhara Yusuf and HelpAge International CEO, Carole Osero Ageng’o, to co-chair the UN’s first Annual Civil Society Summit to be held in the Global South. It was, essentially, a Civil Society Prepcom for the Summit of the Future – and developed the 20 x ImPACT Coalitions designed to bring together Governments and Civil Society in support of the Summit’s goals. Following the Meeting, the Co-chairs combined the outcomes of the discussions of all the ImPACT Coalitions into a single document which was distributed to every member state. The session of the ImPACT Coalition on Future Generations had input from the Co-facs, who listened carefully to Civil Society input but, in the end, did not change much in their document. And then, because of the UN’s cash crisis, they diluted the key demand that the UN should have an Envoy for Future Generations.

Action Days: As for the Sustainable Development Summit, the Secretariat organised two Action Days when Civil Society Organisations in consultative status with the UN were invited to discuss their ideas for the Summit. For the Summit for the Future, Action Day ONE was focussed on Youth – which was opened by an indigenous American, and included a dialogue between the Secretary General and selected young people at which he offered his apologies to the youth for being “the generation that messed up.” On the Second day – there were a number of ImPACT coalitions who presented their hopes for the Summit – but it wasn’t clear who was listening to them. Also, despite the whole event being organised by the UN Dept. of Global Communications, it was immensely hard to get a comprehensive list of when and where these civil society meetings were happening and who was speaking at them. In the week before and after the Summit, several NGOs hosted off-site meetings outside the UN – including the School for International Futures daylong meeting on “Building Hopeful Futures” and a whole series of mini-Davos-style meetings at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park arranged by the Goals House group. What these Action Days did accomplish was to convince UN Member State Governments that there is a considerable group of citizen activists who are determined to see some action as a result of these expensive summits.

PEACE CHILD INTERNATIONAL’S JOURNEY TO THE SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE: •

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The UN 75 Anniversary Festival – building a more secure world: As well as marking the UN’s 75th anniversary, this festival addressed the overwhelming sense of insecurity we all felt as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. We were also experiencing the dramatic effects of global warming, so felt compelled to work together to prioritise actions for building a better world. The festival’s online workshops explored the challenges we face on 6 key areas of insecurity: Health, Food, Environment, Economics, Peace and the Digital world. On the UN’s actual 75th Anniversary (October 24th) artists from across the world united in an evening concert put together by Peace Child International exploring UN Past, Present & Future. The Festival produced a full action plan, complete with background papers, useful links, and acknowledgements.

The Tallinn / Narva Intergenerational Conference & Declaration: Held in August 2021, just ahead of the Glasgow COP, experts from the UK, Germany and Estonia discussed with youth from 14 European countries issues varying from the plans for a Global Citizens’ Assembly, to how to create “Smart Communities,” to numerous ideas for strengthening the European Green deal to address the Climate Emergency – through to drawing on Estonia’s enviable reputation for digital leadership to create globally-sharable software to deal with health, governance and education. The Tallinn Declaration was supposed to be presented to the European Union as formal Citizen input to the Glasgow COP process but the conference’s

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major organiser and funder failed to make contact with PCI or any of the delegates after the meeting, so PCI forged its own track with the Coalition for the UN We need. (C4UN) Environmental Governance Track: David Woollcombe, President of Peace Child International, co-chaired this track with Nandini Harihar of the Indian Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). There was a third youth coordinator who dropped out due to a death in the family. We held seven consultations with a handful of experts – and developed an initial Briefing Paper and, after the consultations, a First Draft Environmental Governance Paper which was discussed at the GFF. Though we were disappointed at the somewhat casual way that this was edited into the Interim People’s Pact, the whole process raised a number of interesting and new ideas and offered governments a useful citizens’ view of the kind of Global Environmental Governance that the world needs to provide security to Future Generations.

Global Futures Forum: Peace Child brought two young people, Ravi Theja Muthu and Lauren Banham to the GFF – where they co-chaired the Environmental Governance Track sessions. Not much of substance changed as a result of these meetings, but some good questions were raised and discussed. In general, the enthusiasm for Environmental Governance, as evidenced by the momentum generated by the Mobilising an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA) – was palpable. Governments, and UN Staff, took notice – and Chapter 5 of the Final Pact for the Future starts out with a bold commitment Action 38 to: “transform global governance and reinvigorate the multilateral system….” by “deepening international cooperation, reaffirming unwavering commitment to international law, and addressing global challenges to ensure that the work of the United Nations in recent decades does not unravel” – though the tangible results of that commitment are not spelled out.

The Nairobi Civil Society Conference(CSC): As noted above, this was essentially a Civil Society Intergenerational Prepcom for the Summit of the Future. Peace Child sent Lauren Banham who, as a result of her presence at the GFF, had become the Programme Manager for the newly-formed Legal Pact for the Future. She had several speaking roles at the Conference and was pleased to represent Peace Child Intl. as well. David Woollcombe was lucky enough to join her as a Commission for the National Lottery Community Fund took him to Nairobi at the same time as the Conference. He attended the ImPACT Coalition meetings on Future Generations which signally failed to include the apology that the S-G subsequently made to young people for failing to take adequate concern for enabling “future generations to meet their needs.” He also attended and contributed to the ImPACT Coalition on the Localisation of Development – which reflected Peace Child’s long-held belief that small, community-driven, trust-based, regenerative development projects were the most transformative to bottom-of-the-pyramid disadvantaged young women and men.

The Time Travel Chat Show Proposal: Coming out of the CSC, David and Lauren agreed that the endless diet of ‘Panel Discussion followed by Q & A’ was indigestible to delegates and, ultimately, not a constructive contributor of new ideas to the topics under discussion. So – we proposed do get two young delegates, to develop and perform a new version of the Peace Child Time Travel Chat Show to stimulate an in-depth, audience discussion that could involve an audience of up to 100 people and gather opinions from all of them. The format was tried and tested both in the run-up to the Rio+20 Conference and the Create the Change programmes . Sadly, the UN turned down this proposal: the resulting format of the Action Day events was uniformly ‘Panel Discussion followed by Q & A’. Shame!

The Final Agreement: The UN’s own Press Release about the Summit called it the “most wideranging international agreement in many years, covering entirely new areas as well as issues on which agreement has not been possible in decades. The Pact for the Future aims, above all, to ensure that international institutions can deliver in the face of a world that has changed dramatically since those institutions were created. As the Secretary-General has said, “we cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents.”

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Good Points: perhaps the best point was that Member States agreed the Pact at all: up until the last minute, it appeared that interventions by Pakistan and Russia might derail the consensus agreement that the Pact required. Now agreed, we have 193 Member State Governments who acknowledge their “primary role and responsibility towards safeguarding the needs and interests of future generations…” This builds on, and re-commits to, the definition of Sustainable Development agreed in the Brundtland Report of 1987 to “meet the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs…” The Pact also agrees in Clause 39, g that: “The question of the veto is a key element of Security Council reform,” and that they “will intensify efforts to reach an agreement on the future of the veto, including discussions on limiting its scope and use.” It also agreed, in Action 25, to “advance the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons” which included a decision to “Recommit to the goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Disappointments: The Pact did not strengthen the language on Climate Change. In Action 9, on “actions to address climate change,” the Pact repeats the language of the COP about “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power…” – rather than the “phase-out” which civil society had lobbied for. Also in the Declaration on Future Generations, Clause 11 on “promoting international stability, peace and security,” member states deleted the phrase: “including by seeking a safer world without nuclear weapons…”

Having agreed Action 25 (noted above) – removing the commitment to bequeath to future generations a world without nuclear weapons was surprising, and very disappointing.

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More Summits: (of course!): 2025 will see UN Summits on Financing Development in Spain in June/July; A World Social Summit in September at the UN HQ in New York; COP 30 in Belém, Brazil (November) Linkages to on-the-ground Action Partnerships: One of the UN’s major cheer-leaders, Liz Cousens, head of the UN Foundation, calls in her thoughts about Next Steps following the Summit, called for an “army of doers to put their shoulders to the wheel.” The UN itself, and the Civil Society coalitions that support it, hope that the ImPACT Coalitions set up by the Civil Society Conference in Nairobi will continue and grow to become that army. Peace Child International is committed to that process and will seek to support the UK National Lottery as it launches its new International Programme which is designed to implement Action 6 of the Pact which seeks to “ - invest in people to end poverty and strengthen trust and social cohesion through the localization of sustainable development.” This programme for which PCI was commissioned to research and identify Pilot Projects in May 2024, seeks to deliver community-driven, regenerative, trust-based, non-extractive, decolonised development projects in Africa that are genuinely owned and driven by communities. In order to increase real sustainable development partnerships between the Global South and North, Peace Child is working on a pairing scheme that allows community groups in the UK and Africa to learn from their different priorities for sustainable development and thus provide a cornucopia of ways to heal and re-generate the plane for future generations.

Youth as Ambassadors for Future Generations: With its UN Centenary Peace Child and 2hander Time Travel Chat Show, PCI will seek to encourage young people everywhere to become Ambassadors for the UN’s Pact for the Future – and encourage current and future leaders to take seriously their role of being Good Ancestors to Future Generations.

Explaining complicated concepts like “anticipatory governance” and “strategic foresight” ( which is different from forecasting! - ) is a serious communications challenge – but, as in all its projects, PCI will replace the UN’s wonk-ish vocabulary with cool, accessible concepts that enable every young person to re-brand themselves as serious futurologists working to ensure a safe, sustainable future for themselves, their children and grand-children.

David R Woollcombe, President, Peace Child International 25th September 2024, United Nations HQ, New York

UN chief António Guterres to seek world leaders’ backing for vision of the future Pact covering wars, AI, climate crisis and inequality has been watered down, say critics Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor Sat 21 Sep 2024 02.00 EDT

António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations. Global leaders are gathering in New York this month for the UN’s Summit of the Future. Photograph: The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, will try to persuade world leaders to extend their horizons beyond current wars by adopting a pact that he hopes will set a path for a new system of global governance that can prevent similar crises in the future.

Global leaders will gather in New York next week for the UN Summit of the Future, the centrepiece of this year’s launch of the annual United Nations general assembly.

Guterres had outlined an ambitious agenda covering artificial intelligence, groundbreaking UN security council reform, outer space, peace operations, climate change and financing development, but critics say that outline has not so much shrunk as become ever-less specific.

The toll of grinding negotiations and the need for consensus have underlined the divisions that have immobilised the UN for a decade, leading to a watered-down document called “pact for the future” due to be announced at a summit. Talks about the final draft, its five chapters and 58 actions must end on Saturday.

For more than a year Guterres had hoped that by confronting world leaders with the scale

of the future challenges they collectively face, they could be persuaded to set aside some of those divisions about the present.

Guy Ryder, the UN undersecretary for policy who is at the helm of the process, insists the pact “can render the UN and the multilateral system more effective, participatory and networked”, but at briefings he struggled to convince reporters this was not another UN mission statement that will gather dust similar to the 2015 sustainable development goals summit or the Nelson Mandela peace summit in 2018.

At a press conference Guterres called for the current generation of peacebuilders to address challenges not visible when the UN was invented as a much smaller body 80 years ago.

“International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them. We see out-ofcontrol geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts – not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond. Runaway climate change. Runaway inequalities and debt. Runaway development of new technologies like artificial intelligence – without guidance or guardrails. And our institutions simply can’t keep up,” he said.

“Crises are interacting and feeding off each other – for example, as digital technologies spread climate disinformation that deepens distrust and fuels polarisation. Global institutions and frameworks are today totally inadequate to deal with these complex and even existential challenges.

“It is no great surprise. Those institutions were born in a bygone era for a bygone world.”

Few disagree with his analysis, but many question whether the pact provides new solutions, as opposed to aspirations. Guterres insisted it represented progress, saying it offers “the strongest language on security council reform in a generation – and the most concrete step towards council enlargement since 1963. The first set of governance measures for new technologies, including artificial intelligence, in all their applications – with the UN at its centre. A major advance in reform of the international financial architecture with the most significant language yet strengthening the role of developing countries. A step change in financing the sustainable development goals and a commitment to advance our [sustainable development goals] stimulus, multiplying the resources available to developing countries.”

David Miliband, the chief executive of International Rescue Committee, said the pact did include practical proposals, such as an emergency platform allowing the UN to use its convening power to address global shocks such as pandemics. He said his test for the pact was “not novelty but strength, commitment and follow-through in a world where the nature of global risk has changed”.

But the negotiators have confronted familiar problems including cold war standoffs, shortage of cash and entrenched western reluctance to cede power to emerging powers – at the security council and in financial institutions. Seeking consensus among 193 countries has been no easy task for the two facilitators, Germany and Namibia. Nor has the backdrop of wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan helped the atmosphere.

Various critics have said the UN pact is not the right place to settle specific differences.

Russia has opposed overspecific references to nuclear disarmament. Others have said the Cop conferences are the only place to address the climate crisis.

Richard Gowan, the UN specialist at the International Crisis Group, said there was a western reluctance to address the imbalances in the multilateral financial bodies. In a paper for Chatham House thinktank he observed: “The US and its allies argue that the UN is not the right space to negotiate complex financial issues. They say the World Bank and [International Monetary Fund] – where western powers still hold decisive shares of the votes – have a mandate to address these topics. A lot of diplomats from poorer states will be happy if world leaders make political commitments to sort out debt and development issues at the summit. But some hardliners, such as Pakistan, have argued that is not enough, and have even suggested cancelling the summit.”

There are some signs of movement on security council reform where three of the five permanent members on the 15-strong council are France, the UK and the US. The US has suggested creating two new permanent seats for African countries without veto power. But India and Brazil’s claims are also pressing. On the theme of expansion of the security council, an answer may eventually be found.

Ingenious solutions to reduce the veto of the permanent members abound, only to be crushed on the rock of objections from Russia, US and China, and a slow migration is visible to greater use of the larger general assembly where the veto does not apply. But the speed of reform does not match the speed with which the world – its technology and power dynamics – is changing.

At best Gowan argues the pact can provide a hook or staging post for UN reform, and for new issues such as AI to proceed at future summits.

Miliband said the UN system could only be as good as its members. He said: “Fragmentation of political power around the world is producing gridlock at the apex of the international system: the UN security council.”

Will the Summit of the Future help the UN stop its rot?

UN secretary-general António Guterres hopes the summit will better equip the faltering organization for new global challenges. But restoring faith in multilateralism may take longer

Richard Gowan UN Director, International Crisis Group THE WORLD TODAY - 9 SEPTEMBER 2024 The United Nations often seems inadequate in an era of international mistrust: the Security Council has failed to respond meaningfully to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan; scientists warn that there is little to no chance of states meeting the UN’s goals to limit global warming, agreed in 2015; and multilateral efforts to end extreme poverty are faltering.

On September 22 and 23, leaders will gather in New York for an event that is meant to stop the rot. The Summit of the Future, announced by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, in 2021, is intended to face up to these challenges. Yet there is a risk that it will only highlight the limits to international cooperation.

Many non-western countries see the UN as weighted against their interests: Guterres is blunt in saying that existing UN institutions cannot manage 21st-century challenges. He has admitted international cooperation failed during the Covid pandemic, despite its global reach, as governments prioritized the protection of their citizens. He is also concerned that there are no real multilateral frameworks for managing new technologies such as AI. The secretary-general also believes many existing multilateral institutions are stuck in the past. The United States and Europeans continue to have excessive power in the Security Council and international financial institutions.

Many non-western countries see the UN as weighted against their interests.

Multilateralism that works: The Summit of the Future is supposed to a be a moment when presidents and prime ministers address these problems head on. But as one senior diplomat involved in pre-summit negotiations noted, it has been hard to focus on innovation at the UN against the backdrop of rows over Gaza and Ukraine.

The summit’s Pact of the Future is supposed to be agreed by consensus among the UN’s 193 states – a very tall order: Instead, the diplomat observed, the priority has been to preserve the existing UN system – and to try to build up confidence among members that they can still work together. For all its faults, the UN does still sometimes strengthen international cooperation: last year, diplomats finalized a treaty on protecting biodiversity in the high seas. A successful conclusion to the Summit of the Future would be a further opportunity to show multilateralism can still work.

The summit’s centrepiece is a Pact for the Future, touching on virtually all aspects of multilateral cooperation.

Negotiating the pact which Germany and Namibia have co-facilitated, has been tense with different blocs of states setting out competing priorities. It was finally agreed by consensus among the UN’s 193 member states.

Push from the Global South: Developing countries have insisted the focus should be on international economic cooperation. Scores of UN members are now suffering from unsustainable debt, and a quarter of the UN’s members spend more on servicing the interest on their debt than they do on health and education. These struggling states naturally want the World Bank and IMF to give them improved financing. The US and European countries have acknowledged the problem. This is in part because they recognize the dangers associated with international debt, but also reflects their desire to win over members of the Global South in the struggle for influence with China and Russia.

Nonetheless, the US and its allies argue that the UN is not the right space to negotiate complex financial issues.

They say the World Bank and IMF – where western powers still hold decisive shares of the votes – have a mandate to address these topics. A lot of diplomats from poorer states will be happy if world leaders make political commitments to sort out debt and development issues at the summit. But some hardliners, such as Pakistan, have argued that is not enough, and have even suggested cancelling the summit.

Rather than a celebration, 2030 may be a moment for sober reflection on what went wrong with the SDGs: Turning to peace and security issues, many UN members have argued that Security Council reform is essential in light of the body’s recent failures. India in particular has pushed hard to secure a permanent seat. But diplomats have not been able to find a formula to overhaul the UN’s main security institution, sapping the body’s credibility further as crises pile up on its agenda.

Another headache is nuclear disarmament. Many UN members have called on the nuclear powers to use the summit to recommit to shrinking their arsenals. Russia has vehemently dismissed the idea that the UN should take a lead on arms control, and the Pact of the Future will at best include some lowest common denominator references to disarmament and nuclear risk reduction.

Splits have also emerged over one of the secretary-general’s original priorities: multilateral cooperation around new technologies. The summit is meant to agree a Global Digital Compact covering cooperation on the internet and AI. The idea that the UN could help regulate these technologies is attractive to developing countries. But for those with advanced AI capabilities – most notably the US – it is less welcome. The Digital Compact will contain encouraging promises to harness technology for humanity, but few binding rules.

Another priority for Guterres will be a Declaration on Future Generations, a brief set of pledges by UN members to consider the long-term future of humanity when making policy decisions on issues like the use of natural resources.

Negotiators frequently say that this will be ‘aspirational’, a euphemism for ‘vague’.

A case for the long view: This may sound like thin gruel when the UN is so clearly faltering. Yet it is also worth taking the long view. The various declarations may not reshape international cooperation, but they can create hooks for more substantive diplomacy over looming problems – be it AI or stewarding dwindling global resources as they grow more pressing.

There are precedents for UN commitments setting agendas that last decades. Current development spending targets, for example, are rooted in UN resolutions dating back to 1970. In the future, Guterres may get credit for sketching out areas for international cooperation that will evolve after he leaves office in 2026. Some UN insiders are already looking to 2030 as a possible date for a more serious set of reform discussions.

That is the year that the UN is meant to complete the implementation of its Sustainable Development Goals, an ambitious programme to slash poverty and safeguard the planet originally agreed in 2015.