EDITORIAL

A UN’S PACT OF THE FUTURE WITHOUT DEMOCRACY?

Dear ,

 

A few weeks ago, I was in New York as the Pact of the Future was adopted at the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future. For years we’ve been working towards this moment: The Summit was announced by Secretary-General Guterres as a “once-in-a-generation reset” of the global governance system. It’s the first time in decades that the discussion on how we make decisions at the global level were addressed.

 

I had high hopes for the Pact for the Future. After all, the process got off to a promising start four years ago.  Back then, 1.5 million people were asked about their vision for the UN. These consultations revealed a feeling of disconnection. People felt they had no connection to the UN and no influence on UN decisions. In the years that followed, this gave rise to calls for more participatory mechanisms and better access for civil society in UN’s own report. The resulting Our Common Agenda by  UN Secretary-General António Guterres laid the groundwork for reform proposals, including updating the UN’s structures and processes. Yes, the mills grind slowly, at UN level for years, but my hope grew.

For Democracy International, I accompanied the draft of the Pact for the Future through four rounds of revision. My colleagues and I submitted written contributions as part of the UN's consultation process for civil society. We joined forces with an alliance of organisations in what is known as the ImPACT Coalition, the official process for non-state actors to contribute to the Pact.

 

And now the UN Pact for the Future is here. On the one hand, the document is a milestone. It contains the first commitment to nuclear disarmament in a decade and the first ever international agreement on the governance of artificial intelligence.


It stresses the existential crisis represented climate change and war. It’s a strong commitment to future generations and young people.

 

But where there is light, there is also shadow: the necessary reform of global governance is missing. Report after report, revision after revision, we saw language on citizen participation and cooperation with civil society melt away.
Even the very cautious commitment to find “new ways of engaging with civil society” was scrapped in the eleventh hour. Member states – only 51% of which are democracies - don’t want to share their power. The word “democracy” does not figure in the Pact. And a the structure that was thought out in the 1940’s and ignores the technological and eductional advances we’ve made since stays in place. 

 

What does this mean for us? One small glimmer of hope is that the pact opens the door to a long-awaited reform of the Security Council and a much-needed revitalisation of the work of the General Assembly. We have a couple of proposals on what would help and we’ll continue fighting for them, along with now over 300 civil society organisations and democratic member states of the UN.

 

Even if democracy no longer appears in the text, it still has an impact on UN negotiations. So we will keep at it - despite our disappointment - I promise!

Yours sincerely,


Caroline Vernaillen,

Global Programme Manager,

Democracy International e.V

 
 

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