Zero Draft for the Pact for the Future
In response to the call from the co-facilitators of the 2024 Summit of the Future (Germany and Namibia) to provide written input to the Pact for the Future, Ireland prepared the below national submission in December 2023.
Chapeau
The Chapeau needs to contextualise our work on the Pact for the Future, situating it in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other key agreements – particularly the 2030 Agenda and the eradication of poverty and hunger.
We need to harness the momentum the successful SDG Summit this September has generated. The Pact for the Future can build on the consensus achieved in the SDG Summit Political Declaration and contribute to accelerating progress in achieving the SDGs.
The promotion and protection of human rights, advancing gender equality, and endeavouring to reach the furthest behind first must be central to every Chapter of the Pact for the Future, and this should also receive prominence in the Chapeau section.
Chapter One
Sustainable development cannot be seen in a vacuum. We must recognise the strong interplay between peacebuilding, humanitarian action, and sustainable development. Therefore, while Chapter One will rightly focus on sustainable development and FFD, its relevance across all Chapters should be clear. Similarly, we must also understand how climate change is impacting on all aspects of our life today, including delivering on our ambition to reach the furthest behind first.
While our consultations on Chapter Five will provide an opportunity to address international financial architecture reform, it is important not to detach this from financing for development, and its centrality to achieving the SDGs.
The commitments in the SDG Summit Political Declaration are important to our work on the Pact for the Future and should be a baseline for our commitments in the Pact for the Future.
Chapter Two
The Peace and Security Chapter of the Summit of the Future is an opportunity to reflect on our collective experience of promoting peace. We are appreciative of the contribution of the UN Secretary-General through the New Agenda for Peace.
The promotion and protection of human rights, and advancing gender equality, are central to the Peace and Security Chapter. It is vital that we redouble our efforts to transform gendered power dynamics in peace and security, including through the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Our work in this area must be driven by a strong commitment to the UN Charter, UN Principles, and International Law.
Our actions and responses must be driven by a strong understanding of the interplay between peacebuilding, humanitarian action, and sustainable development on the ground. Ireland recognises the need to address the underlying socio-economic factors that can fuel tensions and contribute to conflict. Poverty, inequality, hunger and marginalisation are drivers of instability and can create fertile ground for grievances to take root. Addressing these issues is essential to preventing conflict and achieving lasting peace.
We must ensure that peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts are fully integrated, through planned transitions. We should see such transition phases as an opportunity to recalibrate and sustain a commitment to building peace by other means. Ireland strongly supports an increased role for the Peacebuilding Commission and adequate, predictable and sustained peacebuilding financing, notably through assessed contributions for the UN Peacebuilding Fund.
We must reinvigorate multilateral efforts in disarmament and non-proliferation. We call on all states to deliver a world free from nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. The existence, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons afford us neither security nor safety. The only guarantee of safety from nuclear weapons is their complete elimination.
The Summit of the Future presents a further opportunity to address growing threats to civilians, including those caused by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, and those from emerging technologies. In particular, Ireland reiterates the essentiality of human control in the context of autonomous weapons
Chapter Three
Ireland sees Chapter Three as critical to the achievement of a strong Pact for the Future, and recognises the potential that digital cooperation, and science, technology and innovation have for helping us to deliver on the SDGs, as well as advancing cooperation in a range of areas.
An ambitious Global Digital Compact needs to strengthen digital cooperation, close digital divides, and ensure an inclusive and safe digital future. It should recognise the concerns that countries have around digital connectivity, digital skills & literacy and capacity-building and foster progress in these areas.
Countries and communities need access to, and capacities in, science, technology and innovation – vital in achieving the SDGs in critical areas such as health, food systems transformation, clean water and sanitation, climate change, clean energy, and removing gender barriers.
The Pact for the Future and the GDC must play an important role in helping us manage new and emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and in helping us to harness the many opportunities that they present.
Ireland welcomes the convening of a High-Level Advisory Board on AI and looks forward to hearing their recommendations on AI governance, which can be a useful input to this Chapter.
Ireland is of the firm view that AI must have a human-centric governance framework that is accountable, transparent and subject to oversight.
We must improve information integrity online and counter the increasing and very damaging trend of online disinformation and misinformation. The elaboration of a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, developed through a whole-of-society approach, is important in this regard.
Our work on the Pact should identify clear plans to harness the opportunity we have to close the digital divide, and to mitigate any risks and potential harms from misuse of digital technologies.
As we work towards elaborating an ambitious Global Digital Compact and Code of Conduct for Information Integrity, it is crucial that we maintain a human rights and human-centric approach. The same rights that people have offline must also be protected online.
Chapter Four
The participation of young people is vital in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating effective policies at local, national, and international levels.
We must collectively push for further progress on youth engagement. Failing to develop genuine partnerships with young people in the formulation of policies means excluding an entire constituency of voices.
We need to restore and build trust by young people in the UN. Ireland joins the EU in its call for meaningful and
inclusive youth engagement in all UN intergovernmental mechanisms and processes.
We believe that the Pact for the Future should recognise the role that young people play in realising core agenda items of the UN: in achieving the 2030 Agenda – as workers, innovators, leaders – contributing to peacebuilding, and the resolution of conflict; in being to the forefront of efforts to promote and protect human rights and gender equality; and in bringing much needed focus on the long-term consequences of climate change.
We should seek new and complementary entry-points for young people’s voices to reach and influence our decisions, allocating financial resources appropriately toward this end.
Chapter Five
Ireland fully supports the objectives identified by the Secretary General on UN 2.0 and the Quintet of Change. The reforms and transformations coming from the UN75
Declaration and Our Common Agenda are necessary and urgent.
No reform is more needed than that of the UN Security Council. While change is urgently needed, an enlarged Security Council cannot be a goal in and of itself. The aim of expansion must be to create a Council that truly reflects the diversity of the UN membership.
It is appropriate that international financial architecture reform should be addressed under the heading of Global Governance. However, we should not detach this from financing for development - and its centrality to achieving the SDGs. The commitments in the SDG Summit Political Declaration in relation to international financial architecture reform are important to our work on the Pact for the Future.
Our work on the Pact for the Future must take account of progress in the International Financial Institutions and Multilateral Development Banks between now and September 2024.
In relation to outer space, Ireland is committed to the preservation of a secure and sustainable space environment that ensures the use of outer space on an equitable basis for all.
The participation of diverse stakeholders, including international organisations, commercial actors, civil society, the ICRC and academia, along with all states, is crucial to advancing an approach that can effectively reduce space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviour.
Human rights, gender equality, and the empowerment of all women and girls must be meaningfully integrated into our work on the Pact – and reflected too in this Chapter.
As we discuss new approaches to global governance, we must take the opportunity to address inequalities and exclusiveness which are inherent in many of our current structures.