IFSW United Nations representatives Sebastian Cordoba, Evelyn Tomaszewski and Anne Deepak attended the UN’s Summit of the Future (as part of the General Assembly High-Level Week) and parallel events advocating urgent action to address inequality, human rights protections, global conflicts and climate change.
The Summit of the Future was a pivotal event where world leaders gathered and adopted the Pact for the Future.
The Pact is an action-focused document comprising 56 specific actions that seek to reinvigorate the 2030 Agenda/ Sustainable Development Goals. It addresses some of the main systemic and structural barriers that have led to the failure to meet any of the Goals. As Secretary-General António Guterres said, “We cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents.”
Over the past 12 months, IFSW representatives have been deeply involved in the consultation process for the Pact providing numerous written and oral statements across each draft. Our colleague, Charles Mbugua, who represents IFSW to the UN in Nairobi, attended the Civil Society form on SotF in May 2024. The final document, while lacking in the scope and transformational change that is required, does take important steps towards a transition away from fossil fuels, international financial architecture reform and a significant change of UN systems (and most urgently Security Council reform to address its failures in Palestine/Israel and Ukraine).
IFSW UN Representative (Asia-Pacific) Dr Sebastian Cordoba said “The Pact is an important step forward to reinvigorate action and commitments, but we’ve been here before and it must be more than empty promises. The transformation of global governance needs greater specificity and compliance mechanisms. Reinvigorating multilateralism requires transforming UN systems to create a more inclusive space built on partnership and dialogue. Civil Society Organisations/Non-government organisations struggle to engage in meaningful participation in UN processes to make their voices heard. While the Pact has specific actions focusing on this, there is little detail about how this will look in practice. The tragic irony was that the Summit itself perpetuated many issues that lead to limited CSO engagement.”
IFSW UN Representative (Asia-Pacific) Dr Sebastian Cordoba
IFSW UN Representative (North America) Evelyn Tomaszewski said “Action 6 calls for ending poverty (and the strengthening of trust and cohesion): with commitments to promote universal health coverage, increase access to quality, inclusive education and lifelong learning, improved opportunities for decent work for all, and universal access to social protections are all critical to reducing inequalities. To move from words to action – member states must step up and commit fully from a lens of access and equity – to move the PACT from words to action. This is a critical step to a future that is true transformational governance, and moving towards meeting the goals of the SDGs”.
IFSW UN Representative (North America) Anne Deepak said “The Pact, while non-binding and less than what was hoped for does provide a challenge and opportunity to IFSW members through the language that tasks the International Monetary Fund with reviewing the sovereign debt architecture and the call for a framework to measure progress beyond GDP. IFSW can leverage this language to amplify the voices of debtor countries to push for debt reforms and a framework to measure progress beyond GDP grounded in the holistic human rights perspective embedded in the People’s Charter.”
IFSW Global UN Commissioner Priska Fleischlin thanks the team for representing IFSW and with that the national associations and its members. “It is another example of the IFSW UN Commission’s aim to strengthen the collaboration between governments and civil society on a global and national level. As social workers, we are committed to working in partnership and collaboration as we strive towards for a sustainable and socially just world through the actions of the Summit and beyond.”