Barbara Adams (GPF) gave a presentation on a brief analysis of the Pact for the Future, following the 2024 UN Summit of the Future (SOTF).
The event “The Morning after the SoTF: Critical reflections and the Right to Development” focused on the Summit of the Future (SoTF), touted as a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to forge a ‘Pact for the Future’ – a new international consensus on what the future should look like, and how this can happen. The event’s guiding questions included: how can the Pact for the Future help realize the Right to Development, and how can the Covenant on the Right to Development help see the SDGs into fruition?
Co-organized by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS), Women’s Major Group (WMG), World Council of Churches (WCC) and Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CoNGO).
See her presentation at the event and the slides developed for reference below.
A couple of very specific examples with regard to process of negotiations on the Pact, basically looking at the International Financial Architecture, whose governance was set up nearly 80 years ago and is enshrined in the International Financial Institutions.
There is in there, at the beginning, “we will reform the International Financial Architecture” – this is Rev.1 of the Pact for the Future, which was available to all of us months ago. It lists why it’s needed and it lists issues to do with affordable credit, unsustainable borrowing and the need for a fair debt restructuring mechanism. What was adopted a couple of days ago? “We will accelerate the reform of the International Financial Architecture, so countries can borrow sustainably to invest in their long-term development” – in other words, more of the same; can’t really avoid that.
Example number 2: Credit Rating Agencies. A lot of us have been involved in the analysis around how the whole risk and assessment of how, Global South-mainly, countries actually can get credit on the market and how they pay higher rates of interest and so on and so forth.
So Rev.1: “Request the Secretary-General to engage with credit rating agencies to agree actions that enable access to resources and enhance…” etc. etc. Adopted: “Takes note of the Secretary-General’s efforts to engage with credit rating agencies”, etc. This basically tells you a lot about the power asymmetries that go into negotiations.
One more. Tax – I don’t have time to tell you why tax is so important. Rev.1: “Explore the options for a global minimum level of tax on high net-worth individuals at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (i.e., in the UN). The UN has a role in global economic governance.” Adopted text: “Explore the options for international cooperation; explore the options on taxation of high net-worth individuals in appropriate fora.” “Explore the options” language – we all know means “no commitment” and the “in appropriate fora” means not the UN.
I will not regale you with more of my analysis; I will give you some good news. There’s Action 53. One of the what I call a veto-like instrument that needs to be overcome is the way in which we use GDP, gross domestic product, to basically measure progress of anything we’re trying to do and determine policies to do with recession, inflation, etc. at all levels, domestic [and] international. We’ve been struggling on this on for over a decade. Got something: “We will develop a framework on measures of progress on sustainable development to compliment and go beyond gross domestic product.” We actually have in here the opportunity to get the neoliberal, to get however you want to put it, “guardrails” that stop us going for more democratic global governance and related instruments in this kind of material.
So the answer is, the yawning gap of what we wanted this to do, obviously is still a huge gap. Everybody will make their own assessment of what pieces they can use and I just have one question and one request to all of you. When you find the bits you can work with, please don’t ignore the fact there are obstacles there.
There is something in here – Action 48. “We acknowledge the important role of the United Nations in global economic governance. Recognizing that the United Nations and International Financial Institutions have complementary mandates, that make the coordination of their actions crucial, while fully respecting existing governance mechanisms and mandates, independent of the United Nations, that preside over specific organizations and rules.” Decoded – “complementary”, “you do your thing we do ours”; “coordinate” in the power imbalance coordination mechanism; “respecting existing governance mechanisms”, where something that affects the actual decision-making processes of so many people is still one dollar one vote – shareholder. With people here and all the work you do, I don’t want to leave you with a bad feeling; I’m not depressed, I’m so pleased that we eventually got power imbalances on the able. But I also very much know that the journey needs, first of all it’s a gate, the gate could be closed on us if we don’t keep our eyes open and it’s very likely that the hurdles going to grow.
