Executive Summary
The Pact for the Future, adopted at the 2024 Summit of the Future, outlines 56 transformative actions across sustainable development, peace and security, science and technology, youth engagement, and global governance. It reaffirms commitment to the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, emphasizing poverty eradication, gender equality, climate action, and human rights. The Global Digital Compact aims to close digital divides, promote inclusive digital economies, ensure safe and rights-respecting digital spaces, advance equitable data governance, and enhance international AI governance. The Declaration on Future Generations commits to safeguarding the needs of unborn generations through intergenerational solidarity, sustainable development, peace, and human rights. The document calls for urgent reforms in multilateral institutions, including Security Council reform, and international financial architecture to support developing countries. It stresses the importance of international cooperation, inclusive participation, and anticipatory governance to build a just, peaceful, sustainable, and prosperous future for all humanity.
Characteristics
- The Pact for the Future outlines 56 ambitious actions across sustainable development, peace and security, science and technology, youth engagement, and global governance to achieve a safe, just, inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous world by 2030 and beyond.
- It emphasizes eradicating poverty, ending hunger, closing financing gaps, promoting gender equality, addressing climate change, and protecting human rights as central to sustainable development.
- The Global Digital Compact aims to close digital divides, foster inclusive digital economies, ensure safe and rights-respecting digital spaces, advance equitable data governance, and enhance international AI governance for humanity's benefit.
- The Declaration on Future Generations commits to safeguarding the needs and interests of future generations through intergenerational solidarity, peace, human rights, environmental protection, and inclusive, forward-looking policymaking.
- The documents call for strengthening and reforming multilateral institutions, including the UN Security Council, Economic and Social Council, and international financial architecture, to be more representative, effective, and responsive to global challenges.
- They stress the importance of international cooperation, multi-stakeholder engagement, and increased financing to implement these commitments and ensure a sustainable future for all.
Actors
Political Actors
Practical Applications
- Implementation of 56 concrete actions under the Pact for the Future covering sustainable development, peace and security, science, technology and innovation, youth and future generations, and global governance.
- Scaling up efforts to fully implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including mobilizing significant additional financing from all sources and removing obstacles to sustainable development.
- Targeted measures to eradicate poverty, including rural development strategies, social protection systems, and preventing people from falling back into poverty.
- Coordinated action to end hunger and eliminate food insecurity and malnutrition, including emergency food supplies, support to agricultural production, and building national resilience.
- Closing the Sustainable Development Goal financing gap in developing countries through sustainable, affordable, accessible, transparent, and predictable development finance; scaling up official development assistance; strengthening domestic resource mobilization; combating illicit financial flows; and promoting inclusive international tax cooperation.
- Ensuring the multilateral trading system remains an engine for sustainable development by promoting export-led growth, WTO reform, and facilitating accession for developing countries.
- Investing in people to end poverty and strengthen social cohesion through universal health coverage, inclusive education, decent work, social protection, affordable housing, energy access, migration partnerships, water management, and disaster risk reduction.
- Strengthening peaceful, just, and inclusive societies by promoting human rights, rule of law, access to justice, and accountable institutions.
- Achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls by removing barriers, increasing investments, ensuring reproductive rights, and eliminating violence.
- Accelerating climate action aligned with the Paris Agreement, including tripling renewable energy capacity, phasing down coal, conserving ecosystems, scaling up climate finance, and universal multi-hazard early warning systems by 2027.
- Accelerating efforts to restore, protect, conserve, and sustainably use the environment, including pollution control, biodiversity protection, and sustainable consumption and production.
- Promoting culture and sport as integral to sustainable development, including international cooperation on the return of cultural properties and fostering intercultural dialogue.
- Strengthening international peace and security through addressing root causes of conflict, protecting civilians, supporting humanitarian assistance, promoting peaceful dispute resolution, and adapting peace operations.
- Combating terrorism, transnational organized crime, and illicit financial flows with whole-of-government approaches and enhanced international cooperation.
- Advancing nuclear disarmament and upholding disarmament obligations, including chemical and biological weapons prohibition.
- Managing risks and opportunities of new and emerging technologies, including outer space governance and lethal autonomous weapons discussions.
- Seizing opportunities from science, technology, and innovation for sustainable development, including capacity-building, technology transfer, open science, and fostering gender equality in STEM fields.
- Supporting the Secretary-General to strengthen the UN role in international cooperation on science, technology, and innovation.
- Investing in social and economic development of children and youth, including education, health, decent jobs, entrepreneurship, and social protection.
- Promoting, protecting, and respecting human rights of young people and fostering social inclusion, including combating discrimination, violence, and climate impacts.
- Strengthening meaningful youth participation at national and international levels through consultation mechanisms, youth representation in UN processes, and capacity-building.
- Transforming global governance by making the multilateral system more effective, inclusive, interconnected, and financially stable.
- Reforming the UN Security Council to be more representative, inclusive, transparent, efficient, democratic, and accountable, with intensified intergovernmental negotiations.
- Strengthening the relationship between the Security Council and General Assembly, improving working methods, and enhancing transparency and accountability.
- Revitalizing the General Assembly’s role in addressing global challenges and supporting peace and security.
- Strengthening the Economic and Social Council’s coordination role, NGO engagement, youth forum, and subsidiary bodies like the Commission on the Status of Women.
- Enhancing the Peacebuilding Commission’s strategic role, partnerships, and support to national peacebuilding efforts.
- Strengthening the UN system’s agility, innovation capacity, development system, disability inclusion, and transparent senior appointments.
- Ensuring effective enjoyment of all human rights and responding to emerging challenges with adequate financing and coordination among UN human rights entities.
- Accelerating reform of the international financial architecture to address development challenges, strengthen developing countries’ voice, mobilize additional financing, enable sustainable borrowing, support systemic shocks, and meet climate finance needs.
- Developing a framework on measures of progress on sustainable development beyond GDP, with an independent expert group and intergovernmental process.
- Strengthening international response to complex global shocks with coordinated, multidimensional approaches respecting national ownership and equity.
- Strengthening partnerships with parliaments, civil society, private sector, local authorities, and regional organizations for implementation of commitments.
- Strengthening international cooperation for peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including adherence to the Outer Space Treaty and engagement of stakeholders.
- Implementing the Global Digital Compact with objectives to close digital divides, expand digital economy inclusion, foster safe and rights-respecting digital space, advance data governance, and enhance AI governance.
- Committing to universal and meaningful connectivity by 2030, including financing mechanisms, resilient infrastructure, and mapping schools and hospitals online.
- Developing national digital skills strategies, digital literacy, and capacity-building tailored to vulnerable groups.
- Promoting digital public goods and infrastructure, open standards, interoperability, and investment especially in developing countries.
- Expanding inclusion in the digital economy through enabling environments, fair competition, technology transfer, and support for MSMEs.
- Upholding human rights in digital space, including child rights, privacy, freedom of expression, and calling on private sector accountability.
- Supporting open, global, interoperable Internet governance with multi-stakeholder participation and preventing fragmentation.
- Creating safe and secure online environments by addressing violence, hate speech, misinformation, and ensuring privacy and freedom of expression.
- Promoting information integrity through media literacy, support for independent media, and access to fact-based information.
- Advancing responsible data governance with privacy protections, interoperable frameworks, capacity-building, and equitable data sharing.
- Facilitating secure cross-border data flows with trust and developing common data standards.
- Enhancing international governance of AI with inclusive, risk-based approaches, establishing an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, a Global Dialogue on AI Governance, capacity-building, transparency, accountability, and promoting AI for sustainable development.
- Establishing UN system coordination for digital cooperation, monitoring progress, and convening high-level reviews of the Global Digital Compact.
- Implementing the Declaration on Future Generations through long-term planning, inclusive access to knowledge, strengthening accounting systems, capacity-building for future shocks, whole-of-government coordination, stakeholder cooperation, and appointing a Special Envoy for Future Generations.
- Convening a high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly on future generations during its eighty-third session to review implementation and receive reports.
Resulting Commitments
- Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
- Scale up efforts towards the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the Paris Agreement.
- Mobilize significant and adequate resources and investments from all sources for sustainable development.
- Scale up and fulfill official development assistance commitments, including the goal of 0.7% of gross national income for official development assistance and 0.15 to 0.20% for least developed countries.
- Secure an ambitious outcome at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025 to close the Sustainable Development Goal financing gap.
- Secure an ambitious outcome at the World Social Summit in 2025.
- Triple renewable energy capacity globally and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
- Achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- Substantially reduce methane emissions globally by 2030.
- Halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
- Set a new collective quantified goal of at least 100 billion USD per year for climate finance at the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC.
- Achieve universal coverage of multi-hazard early warning systems by 2027.
- Complete negotiations on an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution by the end of 2024.
- Connect all persons to the Internet by 2030.
- Develop and strengthen targets, indicators, and metrics for universal meaningful and affordable connectivity by 2030.
- Connect the remaining 2.6 billion people to the Internet by 2030.
- Map and connect all schools and hospitals to the Internet by 2030.
- Establish and support national digital skills strategies to achieve maximum coverage of basic digital skills by 2030.
- Develop and maintain safe and secure open-source software, open data, open AI models, and open standards by 2030.
- Foster an open, fair, inclusive, and non-discriminatory digital environment for all by 2030.
- Create a safe and secure online space for all users by 2030, including mental health and well-being standards.
- Design and roll out digital media and information literacy curricula by 2030.
- Increase the data available to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals by 50% by 2030, disaggregated by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status, disability, and geographical location.
- Develop interoperable data governance frameworks and promote data privacy and security by 2030.
- Establish, within the UN, a multidisciplinary Independent International Scientific Panel on AI with balanced geographic representation.
- Initiate, within the UN, a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
- Request the President of the General Assembly at the 79th session to appoint co-facilitators to identify terms of reference and modalities for the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
- Request the Secretary-General to put in place modalities for voluntary endorsement of the Global Digital Compact from December 2024.
- Convene a high-level meeting entitled “High-level review of the Global Digital Compact” during the 82nd session of the General Assembly.
- Request the Secretary-General to submit a proposal during the 79th session of the General Assembly for establishing an office to facilitate system-wide coordination of digital cooperation.
- Request the Secretary-General to provide a report on the implementation of the Declaration on Future Generations for consideration at the high-level plenary meeting during the 83rd session of the General Assembly.
- Convene an inclusive high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly on future generations during the 83rd session to review implementation of the Declaration on Future Generations.
- Achieve universal health coverage for all young people, including immunizations and sexual and reproductive health, by 2030.
- Increase investment in education and skills, especially early childhood and girls’ education, to build inclusive, accessible, and resilient education systems by 2030.
- Create decent jobs and livelihoods for youth, especially in developing countries, and establish universal, adequate, comprehensive, sustainable, and nationally owned social protection systems by 2030.
- Promote universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.
- Increase the share of renewable energy substantially by 2030.
- Ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing by 2030.
- Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns, including circular economy approaches, by 2030.
- Develop a framework on measures of progress on sustainable development that complement and go beyond GDP, with recommendations presented during the 80th session of the General Assembly.
- Increase financing for data and statistics from all sources and scale up predictable financing for sustainable development data by 2030.
- Increase investment and funding towards the development of digital public goods and digital public infrastructure, especially in developing countries, by 2030.
- Promote capacity-building to ensure the safe, secure, and resilient functioning of digital systems, networks, and data by 2030.
- Promote the development of digital competencies of public officials and institutions by 2030.
- Promote capacity-building for women and girls, children and youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, migrants, refugees, Indigenous Peoples, and those in vulnerable situations by 2030.
- Promote the adoption of open standards and interoperability to facilitate the use of digital public goods across different platforms and systems by 2030.
- Promote knowledge-sharing and technology transfer initiatives on mutually agreed terms by 2030.
- Promote transparency, accountability, and robust human oversight of artificial intelligence systems in compliance with international law.
- Promote the use of state-contingent clauses in lending, including climate-resilient debt clauses, when lending to developing countries.
- Promote greater use of debt swaps for the Sustainable Development Goals, including debt swaps for climate or nature, to developing countries.
- Promote financial stability through international cooperation on, and consistent regulation of, banks and other financial service entities.
- Promote the elimination of all forms of violence and harassment against women and girls, including sexual and gender-based violence.
- Significantly increase investments to close the gender gap, including in the care and support economy.
- Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in relevant international conferences.
- Promote the full, equal, safe, and meaningful participation of women in all United Nations-led mediation and peace processes.
- Increase the inclusive representation of youth in decision-making at all levels in prevention and resolution of conflict.
- Request the Secretary-General to carry out the second independent progress study on youth’s positive contribution to peace processes and conflict resolution by the end of the 80th session.
- Ensure peace operations have predictable, adequate, and sustained financing.
- Ensure adequate, predictable, and sustainable financing for African Union-led peace support operations mandated by the Security Council.
- Achieve a more agile, responsive, and resilient United Nations by enhancing capabilities in innovation, data analytics, digital transformation, strategic foresight, and behavioral science.
- Fully support and strengthen the United Nations development system, including the resident coordinator system, with increased adequate, predictable, and sustainable funding.
- Ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities and disability inclusion at the United Nations.
- Strengthen the Economic and Social Council to accelerate sustainable development.
- Strengthen the Peacebuilding Commission through the 2025 review of the peacebuilding architecture.
- Strengthen the United Nations system to be more effective, efficient, and impactful.
- Strengthen cooperation among States to ensure safe, orderly, and regular migration, including enhancing and diversifying pathways for regular migration.
- Promote accessible, safe, inclusive, and equitable quality education for all, including physical education and sport, and promote lifelong learning opportunities.
- Protect the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health through universal health coverage and resilient health systems.
- Promote international stability, peace, and security, resolving conflicts and crises through peaceful means.
- Eliminate all forms of persistent historical and structural inequalities and eradicate all forms of discrimination.
- Promote international cooperation for the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all humanity, including holding a fourth United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Exploration of Outer Space (UNISPACE IV) in 2027.
- Complete negotiations on an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, by the end of 2024.
Technical Details
Scope
Global
Lead Country
United States (USA)
Policy & Strategic Alignment
EU Policy Alignment
SDG Alignment
Beneficiary Groups
Persons with Disabilities
Persons with Disabilities
Youth
Students & Youth
Gender Equality Initiatives
Women & Girls
Women in Tech
Women & Girls
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Achievement of Sustainable Development Goals
All UN Member States
Sustainable Development
Data Availability for SDG Monitoring
Member States, UN Statistical Commission, International Organizations
Data / Sustainable Development Monitoring
Digital Skills Coverage
Member States, Education Ministries
Education / Digital Literacy
Environmental Sustainability and Restoration
Member States, International Environmental Bodies
Environment / Sustainable Development
Establishment of Independent International Scientific Panel on AI
United Nations
Artificial Intelligence Governance / Science and Technology
Official Development Assistance (ODA) Contribution
Developed Countries
Financing for Development
Renewable Energy Capacity and Energy Efficiency Improvement
All Member States
Energy / Climate Change
Safe and Secure Online Environment
Member States, Private Sector, Civil Society
Digital Safety / Human Rights
Universal Coverage of Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems
Member States, UN system
Disaster Risk Reduction / Climate Adaptation
Universal Internet Connectivity
Member States, International Telecommunication Union, Private Sector
Digital Infrastructure / ICT