In September 2023 — a mere 15 months from now — the United Nations’ 193 member states are expected to convene a Summit of the Future during the General Assembly’s annual high-level week in New York City. At a series of thematic consultations held in February and March 2022 by the president of the General Assembly on Secretary-General António Guterres’s groundbreaking report, “Our Common Agenda,” government representatives called for an “inclusive intergovernmental process” and for the 2023 summit to adopt an “ambitious, action-oriented, future-oriented and tangible outcome document with a view to improving global governance.”

Not since the UN60 Summit, held in September 2005 in New York City, have world leaders gathered to consider systemic reforms across the world body’s three pillars of peace and security, sustainable development and human rights. To better deal with today’s pressing issues such as great-power tensions, extremist violence in fragile states, pandemics, the prospect of runaway climate change, cross-border economic shocks and more sophisticated cyberattacks, the Summit of the Future will need to identify the best ways to marshal the world’s talent and resources with new voices, tools, networks, knowledge and institutions.

Adapting our aging but essential UN system to current and emerging crises will require far-reaching institutional, legal, policy, normative and operational (including financing-related) changes. Simultaneously, these changes must complement and help to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement. Against this backdrop, Our Common Agenda proposes some 90 timely ideas to upgrade governance for issues that transcend borders, including a new Agenda for Peace, a Declaration and Special Envoy for Future Generations and a Global Digital Compact.

This piece was originally published in PassBlue.