In a modest win for multilateralism, 193 countries approved the Pact for the Future just ahead of the UN General Assembly, despite Russia’s last minute efforts to derail it. At more than fifty pages, the Pact lays out a vision for multilateral cooperation across the gamut of global issues, including peace and security, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), development finance, governance reform, climate change, gender equality, AI, and digital cooperation. It is described by the UN as “the culmination of an inclusive, years-long process to adapt international cooperation to the realities of today and the challenges of tomorrow.” It was a passion project for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who aims to secure his legacy with this new and sweeping blueprint for multilateral reform and cooperation.
Unfortunately, the Pact suffers from two fatal flaws: the first is the disconnect between its vision and current events and the second is the disconnect between its signatories’ pledges and their capacity to deliver.
The UN heralds the Pact as the “most wide-ranging international agreement in many years, covering entirely new areas as well as issues on which agreement has not been possible in decades” to enable “a new beginning in multilateralism.” An unsettling but more plausible scenario is that we are facing the beginning of the end of multilateralism. Indeed, Secretary-General Guterres acknowledged as much during his public remarks, stating that “we are here to bring multilateralism back from the brink.”
Sweeping aspirations for a new era of multilateralism are tough to reconcile with escalating conflict in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the scale of human tragedy in Sudan. Indeed, the absence of collective outrage and galvanizing action to address the atrocities in Sudan, which are fueling the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century underscores the extent to which multilateralism is failing.
Our global institutions are under stress, beset by growing polarization and setbacks in meeting major global challenges from crippling debt to climate degradation. Alliances are fragile and fraying. Political leaders face multiple demands for resources and attention. Meanwhile the US election—with its profound implications for multilateralism—looms large. A new political declaration, however well intentioned, will not alter this reality.
The actions intended to underpin this new multilateralism also strain credulity. Take, for example, the Pact’s sections on development finance and the SDGs. Most of the sentiments can be found in last year’s political declaration on the SDGs and other documents of this ilk. As in 2023, delegates have committed to “turbo-charge” the SDGs by taking “bold, ambitious, accelerated, just and transformative actions,” knowing full well such actions will be lackluster and inadequate.
To close the development finance gap (well into the trillions of dollars) and avoid “a further erosion of trust in international relations and the multilateral system” delegates also agreed on a series of largely untenable measures. This includes recommitting to “the fulfillment of the commitment by most developed countries to reach the goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance,” an aspirational target set out in 1970 that virtually no country has met, and continuing “to advance with urgency towards a Sustainable Development Goal stimulus,” the annual $500 billion plan that Secretary-General Guterres championed last year but was in fact dead on arrival.
One could argue that successfully negotiating a global pact in the context of intense polarization can be considered a win in itself. The downside is that repeatedly invoking sentiments not backed by any real conviction will at best do no harm and at worst undermine the very multilateral system that they aim to bolster. In this case, my guess is that the Pact of the Future will quickly become a relic of the past.
CGD blog posts reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise.
CGD is a nonpartisan, independent organization and does not take institutional positions.
