Pact Decoded
Get a snapshot of the world’s key issues at a glance.
Pact Decoded
Get a snapshot of the world’s key issues at a glance.
By Our Future Agenda – United Nations Foundation
Welcome young visionaries and changemakers!
Get ready to dive into the future of our world, simplified just for you.
2024 has been a game-changer. As world leaders gathered at the United Nations Summit of the Future, they made decisions that will shape the world we live in and the one future generations will inherit.
At the heart of this summit is the Pact for the Future, a visionary agreement designed to tackle the crises of today while planning for the challenges of tomorrow.
But that’s not all. Supporting this ambitious Pact are two key annexes that further expand on our collective mission: the Global Digital Compact, ensuring no one is left behind in our digital future; and the Declaration on Future Generations, a promise to safeguard the well-being of those who will come after us.
During the Summit, world leaders also agreed to a Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, addressing one of the most urgent health threats of our time.
However, these documents can be dense, making it hard for busy minds – like yours – to quickly grasp the vital points. That’s where we come in.
We’ve distilled the essence of these global agreements into simple, visually captivating summaries to help you stay informed and empowered.
Through the Our Future Agenda program, the United Nations Foundation is bringing this information to help young thinkers like you step up and shape what’s to come. The future depends on it.
From fighting climate change to making sure everyone’s connected online, and from building peace to protecting our health, these global plans show us how we can create a world that’s fair, resilient, and full of opportunity.
And imagine if we put these plans into action. What if we actually get it right? Imagine a future where our choices today lead to real change: a world where people thrive, nature recovers, equality is the norm, and peace becomes the way we live. These agreements are our guide to making that future happen.
At the end, we’ve mapped out specific actions and deadlines in The Road Ahead: Concrete Steps and Deadlines. This is important because it keeps leaders and organizations accountable, ensuring they follow through on their promises. We’ve also linked these actions to Our Common Agenda, a global plan in 2021 by the Secretary-General to reimagine the UN and that set the stage for the Summit of the Future.
Pact for the Future Annexes Decoded
Declaration on Future Generations
The Declaration on Future Generations is a call to action to protect the rights and opportunities of those who will come after us. It’s not just about fixing today’s problems but also ensuring that future generations inherit a world that’s just, peaceful, and sustainable. From tackling climate change to promoting intergenerational justice and gender equality, this declaration places the well-being of future generations at the heart of global decision-making. It’s a bold reminder that what we do today will echo for centuries to come.
Global Digital Compact
The Global Digital Compact presents a global plan to tackle the widening digital divide. It emphasizes the urgent need for international collaboration to connect billions more people to the internet, safeguard human rights online, and manage the rise and impact of emerging technologies as well as its benefits. This initiative puts us at a crossroads: either we act now to close the digital divide and harness the opportunities technology offers, or face a future where deepening inequalities and unchecked risks threaten global security and privacy.
Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance Decoded
The Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) addresses one of the world’s fastest-growing health threats — the rise of drug-resistant infections. This declaration calls for urgent, coordinated global action to prevent a future where simple infections and routine surgeries become deadly.
It promotes a “One Health” approach, linking human, animal, and environmental health to combat AMR effectively. The message is clear: if we don’t act now, AMR could undo decades of progress in global health.
The Road Ahead
Concrete Steps and Deadlines
The table breaks down the Pact and its annexes into concrete steps and timelines that aim to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. Seeing concrete steps and deadlines is important because it shows that these goals are backed by real commitments, not just ideas. It also enables leaders to act swiftly, adding urgency to global efforts, while concrete steps provide a way to track progress. This ensures accountability and helps everyone – governments, organizations, and citizens– focus on what needs to be done next. Without them, these big global goals would just remain dreams instead of turning into real change.
We’ve also connected these actions with Our Common Agenda, a global plan to reimagine the UN launched in 2021 by the Secretary-General, which proposed the Summit of the Future as a key moment to forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and what we can do today to secure it. The specific actions in the Pact builds on this vision and reinforces the commitments made by countries to collaborate on shared global priorities. This means that countries are continuing the progress already made and working together to face new challenges. It helps create a united front, ensuring that the future of global cooperation is stronger and more prepared to tackle anything that comes our way.
Timeline
Acknowledgments
We would like to sincerely thank Harshani Dharmadasa, Lewis Broadway, Bojan Francuz, Jessica Kline, and Inés Yábar from the Our Future Agenda team for their contributions to bringing Pact Decoded to life.
We are deeply grateful to Pablo Angulo-Troconis, Sofia Borges, Pelle Enarsson, George Hampton, Ryan Hobert, Luisa Kislinger, Julie Kofoed, Maryna Maiboroda, Molly Moss, David Ohana, Megan Rabbitt, Ishaan Shah, Sueann Tannis, and Vincent Valdmanis for their valuable input and feedback, which have greatly contributed to the strength of Pact Decoded.
Special thanks to Arjama Bandhyopadhyay, Janice Chang, Harshani Dharmadasa, Amy Maitland, and Vidushi Yadav for their artwork contributions, which have enriched the visual aspect of the project. Some of the artworks displayed on this page were AI-generated by Our Future Agenda, 2024.
Disclaimer: The Pact Decoded distills key global agreements from the Summit of the Future into simple, visually captivating summaries to help you stay informed and empowered. While we have made every effort to ensure accuracy, we encourage readers to read the original agreements to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at hand and the specific commitments made by world leaders. Engaging with the full documents will provide you with the context and details that are essential for meaningful participation in these global discussions. The summaries are intended to offer an easy-to-understand overview and are not a substitute for official texts.
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