By Prof. (Dr.) Bharat H. Desai
Introduction
The Summit of the Future ended on September 23, 2024 after two days of routine speeches by the Heads of State or Government as well as intensive and interactive four dialogues. The Summit adopted an ambitious outcome document – Pact of the Future– along with two annexes on Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations. It was presented by the President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and formally adopted as resolution 79/1 of September 22, 2024 of the 79th UNGA Session.
Philémon Yang (former Prime Minister of Cameroon elected President of the 79th UNGA session on June 06, 2024), expressed hope that the ideas exchanged would inspire further initiatives at national, regional and the global levels. “As we close the Summit of the Future, I urge all Member States to continue to push for decisive action and to create meaningful progress,” Yang said. The feisty UN Secretary-General (SG), Antonio Guterres justified convening of the 2024 Summit since “21st century challenges require 21st century solutions”. “We are here to bring multilateralism back from the brink. I called for this Summit to consider deep reforms to make global institutions more legitimate, fair and effective, based on the values of the UN Charter… our world is heading off the rails – and we need tough decisions to get back on track”. In his opening remarks, Guterres (September 22, 2024) cautioned the assembled world leaders.
All Roads Led to UNHQ in New York
On September 22-23, 2024 all roads led to the UN headquarters in New York for the Summit of the Future. The leaders of 193-member organization assembled for annual 2024 confabulations that came to be known as the “Year of the Planetary Future” (Author: here, here) to show a way out of the planetary level crisis amidst raging conflicts that have engulfed one-fourth of the humankind (2 billion people around the world). Therefore, as contended by the UNSG Guterres, the world requires “more accountability, justice and opportunity and a future of solutions, not endless conflict”. It needs to get a top priority of the global leaders for addressing the “root causes of war”, as underscored by Cyril Ramphosa, President of South Africa, especially on the African continent. Similarly, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also referred to the global conflicts (it has been a recurrent feature in most of his recent addresses at the global forums) in these words: “Success of humanity lies in our collective strength, not in the battlefield, and for global peace and development, reforms in global institutions are essential.” His reference clearly alluded to India’s aspirations to become a permanent member of the UNSC (Author, SIS Blog, March 22, 2024) as well as other pending ideas for UN reforms such as repurpose of the UN Trusteeship Council [Author, EPL, 52 (2022) 223-235].
Described as once-in-a-generation UN Summit, it provided a unique stage to address current and future global challenges as well as reform of the UN Charter (1945). “I have one overriding message today: an appeal to Member States for a spirit of compromise. Show the world what we can do, when we work together,” UNSG Antonio Guterres said in his September 18 address at the UNGA’s high-level week. He pleaded to the world leaders that “We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents,” he said, stressing that the Summit “cannot fail”. In the same vein, the US President Joe Biden, in his fourth and final address to the UNGA on September 24, 2024, asked some tough questions that confront our troubled world: ““Will we stand behind the principles that unite us? Will we stand firm against aggression? Will we end the conflicts that are raging today?” Then, in a matter of fact way, Biden expressed some words of wisdom to the Assembly that “The choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come.”
The Moment of Truth
The current warnings concerning planetary level crisis and quest of conscientious thought leaders and decision-makers to find solutions to it, underscores proverbial dilemma of the humankind on living in harmony with nature (GA resolution 75/220 of December 21, 2020). It vividly reminds us about the alarm bells rung in the decades of sixties and seventies through scholarly works such as Silent Spring (Rachel Carson, 1962), The Limits to Growth (Club of Rome, 1972), This Endangered Planet (Richard Falk, 1972) and Only One Earth (Barbara Ward & Rene Dubos, 1972). They in fact set the stage for the epochal first UN Conference on Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972). This author recalls his early publication, as a doctoral scholar, sought to underscore the “human quest for development seriously threatens our fragile ecosystem” [Author (1986), “Destroying the Global Environment”, International Perspectives, Ottawa, Nov./Dec. 1986, 27-28]. The resultant global environmental regulatory process has come a long way. In fact, full 50 years later, two curated scholarly works of this author in 2022 (Envisioning Our Environmental Future) and 2021 (Our Earth Matters) reflected the spirit of those early works by reminding the decision-makers as regards rapidly “depleting time" (Nick Robinson, EPL 51 (2021) 361-369] for a decisive course correction.
The timing of the UN Summit was considered as humankind’s “moment of truth” (Author, SIS Blog, June 30, 2024) wherein global challenges are moving faster than the ability to resolve them. The summit took place in the aftermath of the two mega conferences of 2022 on the Stockholm+50 and UNEP@50. In his June 02, 2022 address at Stockholm+50, the UNSG Antonio Guterres had warned that our consumption is “at the rate of 1.7 planets a year” and the “global well-being is in jeopardy”. The gathering storms indicate the planetary-level human-induced crisis at work. Since coming events cast their shadows before, humankind seems to have sleepwalked into an existential “triple planetary crisis” (Author, Green Diplomacy, November 08, 2023).
The advent of the UN has stood the test of time for 79 long years unlike the League of Nations that existed for 20 years. Notwithstanding its limits, as a member-driven international organization in a State-centric global order, the UN matters most for humanity’s survival on planet Earth. The UNGA has been the main anchor for concerted international environmental law-making [Author, EPL 50 (6) 2020, 489-508] and institution-building processes [Author (2014), International Environmental Governance, Boston: Brill Nijhoff, Chapters 2-4) comprising the normative approach at work. Pursuing the global conferencing technique, the UNGA took crucial decisions across a wide canvass that included convening of some major global conferences (1972, 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022). The AR6 Synthesis Report (Interlaken; March 13-19, 2023) of the IPCC, set up by the UNGA in 1988, has now unequivocally confirmed widespread and rapid “human-caused climate change” occurred in the “atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere…in every region across the globe”.
2024: New York Summit
The Summit of the Future outcome document (September 23, 2024) - Pact for the Future – is a negotiated text (56 actions points arranged in 84 paragraphs) agreed upon through intergovernmental negotiations. It comprises two annexes containing two other instruments: Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations. The Pact pledges for a new beginning in multilateralism. It aims to ensure that the UN and other key multilateral institutions can deliver a better future for people and planet. It could enable states to fulfil existing commitments amidst new and emerging challenges and opportunities. The renewed thrust would be on “equally important, interlinked and mutually reinforcing” across three pillars of the United Nations – sustainable development, peace and security, and human rights. It has also been emphasized that “every commitment in this Pact is fully consistent and aligned with international law, including human rights law”. In the opening session of the first day (September 22), the tone of the Summit was set by Philemon Yang, President of the UNGA and the UNSG António Guterres. While the Plenary Meeting took place in the General Assembly Hall, the interactive dialogues were held in the Trusteeship Council Chamber. There is a scholarly idea from the Global South, mooted by this author in an invited talk of January 15, 1999 at Legal Department of the World Bank, (Washington DC), to ‘repurpose’ the same UN Trusteeship Council [Author, EPL, 52 (2022) 223-235] with a new mandate for global environment and global commons.
The Summit comprised four intensive interactive dialogues: (i) Transforming global governance and turbocharging the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development Co-Chaired by K P Sharma Oli, Prime Minister of Nepal; (ii) Enhancing multilateralism for international peace and security, Co-Chaired by Julius Maada Bio, President of Sierra Leone; (iii) Towards a Common Digital Future: strengthening inclusive innovation and cooperation to bridge the digital divides Co-Chaired by Alar Karis, President of Estonia and Mohamed Muizzu, President of Maldives); (iv) The Future Starts Now: enhancing the global system for current and future generations, Co-Chaired by Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica and Evelyn Wever-Croes, Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
The Pact for the Future
The finally adopted the Pact for the Future (as the UNGA resolution 79/1 of September 22, 2024) contains five pillars of sustainable development and financing for development, international peace and security, science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation, youth and future generations and transforming global governance. The two year-long preparatory process for the Summit brought about the realization that future of our international order is at stake and it cannot stand still. It promised to “promote cooperation and understanding between Member States, defuse tensions, seek the pacific settlement of disputes and resolve conflicts”. For the first time, it laid down a roadmap for reform of the UNSC to make it “more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, effective, democratic and accountable”. In essence, the pact considers the rationale given by India for enlargement of the UNSC based of various criteria, categories of membership as well as widely felt need for taming of the use of veto. In fact, it suggests for intensifying efforts “to reach an agreement on the future of the veto, including discussions on limiting its scope and use”. The G4 group (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan) countries have been consistently making a case for urgent UNSC reforms (see, Author, SIS Blog, March 22, 2024).
Indicative of the things to come, the Pact underscores the centrality of the General Assembly as the plenary organ of the UN the “chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ”. Therefore, it has called for further enhancing and making full use of the role and authority of the UNGA to address evolving global challenges. In view of the consistent stalemates in the UNSC and its ineffectiveness to stop most of the global conflicts, the UNGA ends up playing role on maintenance of international peace and security. The Assembly draws its manmade from Article 11 of UN Charter that empowers it to “discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security” as well as “ call the attention of the Security Council to situations which are likely to endanger international peace and security”.
From the perspective of Law of International Organization, the UN Charter contains beautiful balancing between the two principal UN organs (UNGA and UNSC). Notwithstanding the UNSC’s inherent inequality due to ‘veto’ possessed by the P5 countries, the Assembly was expected to fill up the gap whenever the UNSC is deadlocked due to exercise of veto by one of the P5 countries. Since the UN's inception vetoes have been used 321 times (1945-2024). As a result, the action seems to have shifted to some extent to the UNGA. For instance, the UNGA convened the 11th Emergency Special Session that took some vital decisions on conflicts in Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza. For instance, in the aftermath of the Russian veto to defend its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, the UNGA adopted an unprecedented resolution 76/262 on April 26, 2022 for a “standing mandate for a General Assembly debate when a veto is cast in the Security Council”. It provides that “President of the General Assembly shall convene a formal meeting of the General Assembly within 10 working days of the casting of a veto by one or more permanent members of the Security Council, to hold a debate on the situation as to which the veto was cast.” This extraordinary step shows the future pathway to blunt the edges of use of veto by P5. Hopefully, it could render veto less attractive for the future expansion of the UNSC. That inevitably opens the doors for the third category of the UNSC’s permanent membership without veto. It now appears to be the pragmatic way out for G4 in general and India in particular to” secure a permanent seat” on the UNSC’s horse-shoe table.
Significantly, the Pact contains consensual understanding on the need “for the selection and appointment process of the Secretary-General to be guided by the principles of merit, transparency and inclusiveness”. As regards the next selection and appointment processes for the UN Secretary-General, the Pact emphatically notes “regrettable fact that there has never been a woman Secretary-General, and we encourage Member States to consider nominating women as candidates”. Possibly, it indicates winds of change and things to come when successor to Antonio Guterres will be deliberated upon both by the UNGA and the UNSC.
Two Annexes to the Pact
The Pact for the Future (adopted as the UNGA resolution 79/1 of September 22, 2024) contains two annexes on (i) Global Digital Compact (Annex I; pages 37-52) and (ii) Declaration on Future Generations (Annex II; pages 52-56). The 74 paragraphs Digital Compact (25 pages) seeks to address the “power of emerging technologies is creating new possibilities but also new risks for humanity, some of which are not yet fully known. We recognize the need to identify and mitigate risks and to ensure human oversight of technology in ways that advance sustainable development and the full enjoyment of human rights”. Significantly, the Compact swears to build foundations for the future multilateral digital cooperation on the basis of “international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, international human rights law and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. It draws upon previous processes in the field such as report of the World Summit on the Information Society (UNGA Doc. A/60/687 of March 15, 2006), known as the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, and the Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action (UNGA Doc. A/C.2/59/3 of October 27, 2004). The Digital Compact’s objectives (Article 7) have been laid down as follows: (1) Close all digital divides and accelerate progress across the Sustainable Development Goals; 2. Expand inclusion in and benefits from the digital economy for all; 3. Foster an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promote human rights; 4. Advance responsible, equitable and interoperable data governance approaches; 5. Enhance international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Since the Compact emphatically declares that it is “anchored in international law, including international human rights law”, the 13 principles (Article 8) comprised therein would provide a basis for the future global treaty for regulation of the digital technology.
The Declaration on Future Generations is encapsulated in just 4.5 pages (32 paragraphs). It is divided into Guiding Principles (10), Commitments (13) and Actions (9). Building upon the one of the cardinal precepts of International Law – fiduciary obligation – the Declaration reiterates obligation of the present generation to “to leave a better future for generations to come” as well as “safeguards the needs and interests of future generations”. This derives its inspiration from the idea of ‘trusteeship” wherein something is held in sacred trust and safeguarded for handing it over. This idea came to be inserted in the 1945 UN Charter (Chapter XII and XIII) in the form of “Trust Territories” and safeguarding of their interests through the instrumentality of the UN Trusteeship Council (UNTC; Articles 86-91). Now there is concerted movement in the UN corridors and intergovernmental forums for “repurpose” the UNTC (here, here, here) “to serve as a deliberative forum to act on behalf of succeeding generations”. In a similar way, the entire planet Earth regarded as a ‘trust’ (Planetary Trust). Hence the present generation ought to protect and pass on the resources and the Planet in form that would provide adequate “foundation for the prosperity of future generations” (paragraph 4). However, except pious homilies, the Declaration does not carry any concrete normative resolve or institutional transformation. It merely notes the proposal of the UNSG to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations to support the implementation of the Declaration. Thus, it is still work-in-progress.
Conclusion
There were high expectations that the Summit “cannot fail.” The outcome document – Pact of the Future – along with two annexes shows resilience and working of multilateralism at its best. However, the main challenge lies in walking-the-talk for all leaders of all the assembled 193 nations. The UNSG has asserted (September 18, 2024) that “we can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents.” In September 2020 virtual address to the 75th UNGA session as well as September 25, 2021 address at the 76th UNGA, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for “comprehensive UN reforms.” “We cannot fight today’s challenges with outdated structures”, he said (Author, The Tribune, December 02, 2020). On September 23, 2024, the Indian PM’s assertion that the “success of humanity lies in our collective strength, not in the battlefield” further cements the principles Indian position. As 59 plus global conflicts (Uppsala Conflict Data Program, June 03, 2024) jeopardize future of at least 2 billion people, endanger peace and prosperity and derail multilateralism on institutionalized platform of the UN, it would require revisit, in conjunction with other components, processes and structures of the UN, of the Charter ‘blueprint’ for the prohibition of “threat or use for force” [Article 2(4) and Article 51] to make it effective for the remaining three quarters of the 21st century. To operationalize the Pact of the Future would necessitate sincere concerted follow-up action by the UNSG, the UN system as a whole and all the 193 member states. It presents a challenge for the global scholarly community to ideate on the Planetary Future (Author, SIS Blog, June 30, 2024). From his small perch in New Delhi (SIS/JNU), 12, 000 km away from the decision-making center in New York (UN), this author has audaciously sought to make a modest contribution to the global knowledge pool by bringing together cutting-edge ideas of some of the global thought leaders. As a corollary, the author has curated and published in Part – I [EPL Special Issue 54 (2-3), 2024] contribution of ten eminent scholars prior to the 2024 Summit of the Future. The rest of the contributions will be published in Part – II of the EPL Special Issue 54 (4-5) in November 2024. It is within remit of the conscientious scholars, irrespective of location, resources and hindrances (all kinds of mindsets, processes and systems), to think aloud and ahead for a better common future for our only abode – planet Earth.
Prof. (Dr.) Bharat H. Desai is (former) Chairperson and Professor of International Law at the Centre for International Legal Studies (SIS, JNU), who served as a member of the Official Indian Delegations to various multilateral negotiations (2002-2008), coordinated the futuristic knowledge initiatives for the SIS Faculty Wall of Honor (2023-24), the Inter-University Consortium: JNU; Jammu; Kashmir; Sikkim (2012-2020) and the Making SIS Visible (2008-2013) as well as contributes as the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Policy and Law (IOS Press: Amsterdam).