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Can the Pact for the Future Restore UN Confidence Quickly?
Contributed by Global Governance Innovation Network, Stimson Center
Posted 4 February 2026
The world is witnessing the highest number of active conflicts since 1946, including the United States-Israeli war with Iran this year and Russia’s four-year-old war with Ukraine. All conflicts cause immense human suffering, including displacing millions of people, incurring countless deaths and injuries and destroying infrastructure, livelihoods and the environment.
Meanwhile, the international community continues to transgress the earth’s critical planetary boundaries, and new technologies signal both hope and generate shockwaves in economic, ecological and security domains nationally and globally.
Given these trends, and as we commemorate United Nations Charter Day, on June 26, the need for effective global action has never been greater. Yet resources and political support for international organizations, international law and global cooperation writ large are fast declining. Official Development Assistance (ODA), for example, after steadily increasing over the past two decades, peaked in 2023 and plunged 23.1 percent from 2024 to 2025.
Fortunately, the commitments reached by world leaders at the September 2024 Summit of the Future in New York City — the Pact for the Future, Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations — could restore confidence in the multilateral system, including renewed faith in international development assistance. When fully implemented, these agreements could reverse some of today’s troubling trends and put the world on a more peaceful, sustainable and prosperous path.
With a new UN secretary-general installed on Jan. 1, 2027, however, can efforts to carry out the Pact move fast enough to help the UN rebound to its former level of vigor and confidence and deliver results that people and countries expect from the world body?
The future of the Pact
Against the backdrop of wars and environmental decline, curtailments of human rights and democracy, violations of international law and impacts of emerging technologies, our new Global Governance Innovation Report 2026, “Advancing the Pact for the Future and a New Peace & Security Architecture,” offers tools for assessing and accelerating follow-up of the Pact, the Compact and the Declaration. With special emphasis on the extreme liquidity crisis of the UN and Secretary-General António Guterres’s response (the UN80 Initiative), the report recommends specific ways to overcome obstacles to progress in the run-up to these three instruments’ high-level reviews due by September 2028.
Expanding on our Pact monitoring methodology from one year ago, our report introduces two features that enable an assessment so far of 452 sub-action indicators, derived from 40 of the Pact’s 56 “actions”: Most-recently reported data to compare to baseline data; and a dashboard to judge each sub-action indicator’s progress. Next year, we intend to cover all 56 actions.
Stimson Center Table
Overall, our comprehensive review found that more than half of assessed sub-action indicators showed some level of progress. Governments, UN agencies and civil society organizations continue to advance important initiatives, despite difficult political and financial conditions. At the same time, deep cuts to foreign aid and shrinking support for international organizations threaten to slow or even reverse progress.
Perhaps most important, the Pact for the Future challenges the growing narrative that international cooperation is no longer possible. It demonstrates that countries can still come together around major reforms and that multilateral efforts can produce tangible benefits for people around the world — from expanding access to emerging technologies to developing better ways of measuring national well-being beyond economic growth alone.
Advancing the Pact for the Future requires both political commitment and novel approaches. Considering these objectives, our Global Governance report asks a basic question: When the international community reviews the Pact in 2028, what will be remembered as some of the most important achievements and legacy-building innovations flowing from the 2024 Summit of the Future?
To answer that question, we identify 10 potential big-ticket commitments across the Pact ahead of 2028. The goals are to facilitate positive messaging across a clear track record of memorable, high-impact outcomes and to encourage greater momentum and high-level political support across the entire Pact, including: Action 3 (ending hunger); Action 4 (SDG financing and related IFA reforms, Actions 47-52); Action 16 (peacemaking, what some analysts view as a top priority for the next secretary-general); Action 30 (science, technology and innovation for human rights, including the Scientific Panel and Global Dialogue on AI Governance); Action 36 (youth participation); Action 40 (Security Council reform); Action 42 (General Assembly revitalization); Action 46 (human rights for all); Action 53 (beyond GDP); and Action 55 (partnerships).
Despite intensified political divisions and mistrust among major powers, we found that determined governments, motivated international civil servants and dedicated civil society partners are making slow, steady headway on these and several other major Pact goals in defense of UN values. Increasingly (and with an eye to this year’s race for the next secretary-general), these players are seeking leaders in 2027 and beyond who have the vision, courage and experience to restore confidence and transform the UN by realizing the Pact’s full potential.
Across the Pact for the Future and the UN80 Initiative, a common thread emerges: Today’s interconnected crises can no longer be managed through fragmented or reactive approaches. Together, the years leading up to the 2028 Pact review (see figure below), alongside preparations for the post-2030 development agenda and the transition to new UN leadership all represent critical windows for demonstrating that multilateralism can still be a useful tool for prevention, resilience and collective problem-solving.
The success of these efforts will not be measured by the number of declarations adopted or new processes launched, but by whether the international community succeeds in renewing trust, reducing insecurity and delivering a more peaceful, just and sustainable future for current and future generations.
This commentary was originally published in Passblue.
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