‘Youth and Future Generations’ have been an overarching theme of the Summit of the Future since its conception in the 2021 Our Common Agenda (OCA) report, produced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in response to the UN’s 75th Anniversary Political Declaration. Today, this theme is captured as the fourth Chapter of the Summit’s chief outcome document, the Pact for the Future, which as of its third Revision, has four actions and an annexed Declaration on Future Generations. While a consistent message of the Pact’s process has been establishing a clear distinction between youth and future generations as two separate stakeholder groups, a core point of intersection in our impact toward youth and future generations is in the ‘intergenerational multiplier effect’–a concept introduced in Stimson’s 2022 Rethinking Global Cooperation report and worth further unpacking in the context of the Summit.
First, some background on where things stand as of the publication of this article. Chapter four of the Pact for the Future currently has four main actions:
(i) Action 37. We will invest in the social and economic development of children and young people so they can reach their full potential.
(ii) Action 38. We will promote, protect and respect the human rights of all young people and foster social inclusion and integration.
(iii) Action 39. We will strengthen meaningful youth participation at the national level.
(iv) Action 40. We will strengthen meaningful youth participation at the international level.
Action 40 also includes a call for contributions to the UN Youth Fund to facilitate stronger youth participation, as well as developing core principles for meaningful youth engagement across the UN system, in part building on the Youth2030 framework. Additionally, around the world due to the current polycrisis faced by global and national systems, millions of young people lack the essential conditions to realize their potential and human rights. To address these challenges, the Pact commits to investing in youth education, healthcare, and social protection, ensuring equitable access to opportunities. Education is positioned as a cornerstone for empowering youth, equipping them with crucial skills and knowledge necessary for effective participation in decision-making processes–true for both the Declaration on Future Generations and the Pact–building off the Transforming Education Summit that kicked off the series of OCA Summits back in 2022.
The fourth chapter of the pact is annexed with the Declaration on Future Generations (DFG), which at its third revision is structured with Guiding principles, Commitments, and Actions. The resources listed below from the Summit of the Future Information Clearing House Bulletin provide comparisons of the DFG across different revisions. Critically, the declaration defines what the international community, and the UN’s 193 Member States, understand ‘future generations’ to be, and our resultant duties toward them. This is an interesting commentary in itself on global governance’s circular approach to complex problems, given the Brundtland Commission defined Sustainable Development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” back in 1987 and the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals were built on this definition, but it has taken us another 37 years to go back and define what we meant by future generations and thus secure our commitment toward them.
The relevance and impact of the commitments in Chapter 4, along with the Declaration on Future Generations, are, therefore, profound and essential for fostering sustainable development today and the sustainable futures of tomorrow. In the same way, we cannot discriminate between where people live, the Summit of the Future realizes that we cannot discriminate between when people live. This is the crux behind the intergenerational multiplier effect.
With every generation, our society multiplies both our positive and negative governance approaches and consequences. For example, the impact of conflict or economic crisis deepens with every generation, but so too does the benefit of a peace accord or investment in quality education. The horizontal inequalities of today (across ethnicity, race, caste, or gender), become the vertical inequalities of the next generation (across economic wealth, employment opportunities, and conflict situations). Equally, the investments made and policies implemented to reduce inequalities, through strategic foresight, data-driven decision-making, and a whole-of-society approach that includes civil society and the private sector, will land us on the positive side of that multiplier effect with more resilience per generation, more welfare, safety, and wellbeing.
The intergenerational multiplier effect is simply a model that connects the policies today with the impact of outcomes tomorrow. This is where the investment in young people becomes critical. With today’s youth representing the largest demographic in history, particularly in developing countries, their empowerment is crucial for driving positive societal change. Young people do not play a proximal role to future generations. Their agency is not that they are closer to future generations–every generation is a future generation (a future older, middle-aged, or younger generation). Instead, young people play a transitive role. Every generation yet to be born will be younger before they are older. Thus, if we set up the right positive multiplier effects for our young people, we set up every generation for success.
What is clear, is that with the number of tipping points the world faces today (from climate to conflict, to potential pandemics), the steepness of this multiplier is potentially the greatest it has been in history. We stand at the precipice of the last generations that can do something about challenges like climate change, and the first generations to consider how we face new risks and opportunities like artificial intelligence. All the while, we continue to fight the same challenges as our ancestors in increasing education, economic opportunities, and collective well-being.
Chapter four of the Pact for the Future and the annexed Declaration on Future Generations are key policy tools to help the global system concretize what our commitments and actions ought to be. The focus now needs to be on implementation and follow-through. Here, the 47th paragraph of the draft Declaration on Future Generations becomes the most critical. A Special Envoy for Future Generations, a high-level Forum on Future Generations, and a review report will be essential tools to ensure the ideas in the Declaration on Future Generations are not just ‘nice ideas’ but have an impact on the way we think about the three key pillars of the UN. Equally, the review of the Pact for the Future at the 83rd UN General Assembly session in 2028 must be complemented with action across multistakeholder partnerships such as ImPact Coalitions and other groups, across the next four years.
This is the UN leading a discussion to reframe how we think about the impact of our actions. It’s worth paying attention to.
Authors
Nudhara Yusuf is Executive Coordinator of the Global Governance Innovation Network at the Stimson Center and Co-Chair of the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Support of the Summit of the Future
Eliane el Haber is the Chapter 4 Analyst of the Summit of the Future Information Clearing House Bulletin and a Lebanese Education activist.
Additional Resources
- Summit of the Future Information Clearing House Bulletin:
- Summit of the Future Website
- Declaration on Future Generations webpage
Chapter 4: The Pact for the Future and the Intergenerational Multiplier Effect
By Eliane el Haber • Nudhara Yusuf
International & Regional Organizations
‘Youth and Future Generations’ have been an overarching theme of the Summit of the Future since its conception in the 2021 Our Common Agenda (OCA) report, produced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in response to the UN’s 75th Anniversary Political Declaration. Today, this theme is captured as the fourth Chapter of the Summit’s chief outcome document, the Pact for the Future, which as of its third Revision, has four actions and an annexed Declaration on Future Generations. While a consistent message of the Pact’s process has been establishing a clear distinction between youth and future generations as two separate stakeholder groups, a core point of intersection in our impact toward youth and future generations is in the ‘intergenerational multiplier effect’–a concept introduced in Stimson’s 2022 Rethinking Global Cooperation report and worth further unpacking in the context of the Summit.
First, some background on where things stand as of the publication of this article. Chapter four of the Pact for the Future currently has four main actions:
(i) Action 37. We will invest in the social and economic development of children and young people so they can reach their full potential.
(ii) Action 38. We will promote, protect and respect the human rights of all young people and foster social inclusion and integration.
(iii) Action 39. We will strengthen meaningful youth participation at the national level.
(iv) Action 40. We will strengthen meaningful youth participation at the international level.
Action 40 also includes a call for contributions to the UN Youth Fund to facilitate stronger youth participation, as well as developing core principles for meaningful youth engagement across the UN system, in part building on the Youth2030 framework. Additionally, around the world due to the current polycrisis faced by global and national systems, millions of young people lack the essential conditions to realize their potential and human rights. To address these challenges, the Pact commits to investing in youth education, healthcare, and social protection, ensuring equitable access to opportunities. Education is positioned as a cornerstone for empowering youth, equipping them with crucial skills and knowledge necessary for effective participation in decision-making processes–true for both the Declaration on Future Generations and the Pact–building off the Transforming Education Summit that kicked off the series of OCA Summits back in 2022.
The fourth chapter of the pact is annexed with the Declaration on Future Generations (DFG), which at its third revision is structured with Guiding principles, Commitments, and Actions. The resources listed below from the Summit of the Future Information Clearing House Bulletin provide comparisons of the DFG across different revisions. Critically, the declaration defines what the international community, and the UN’s 193 Member States, understand ‘future generations’ to be, and our resultant duties toward them. This is an interesting commentary in itself on global governance’s circular approach to complex problems, given the Brundtland Commission defined Sustainable Development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” back in 1987 and the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals were built on this definition, but it has taken us another 37 years to go back and define what we meant by future generations and thus secure our commitment toward them.
The relevance and impact of the commitments in Chapter 4, along with the Declaration on Future Generations, are, therefore, profound and essential for fostering sustainable development today and the sustainable futures of tomorrow. In the same way, we cannot discriminate between where people live, the Summit of the Future realizes that we cannot discriminate between when people live. This is the crux behind the intergenerational multiplier effect.
With every generation, our society multiplies both our positive and negative governance approaches and consequences. For example, the impact of conflict or economic crisis deepens with every generation, but so too does the benefit of a peace accord or investment in quality education. The horizontal inequalities of today (across ethnicity, race, caste, or gender), become the vertical inequalities of the next generation (across economic wealth, employment opportunities, and conflict situations). Equally, the investments made and policies implemented to reduce inequalities, through strategic foresight, data-driven decision-making, and a whole-of-society approach that includes civil society and the private sector, will land us on the positive side of that multiplier effect with more resilience per generation, more welfare, safety, and wellbeing.
The intergenerational multiplier effect is simply a model that connects the policies today with the impact of outcomes tomorrow. This is where the investment in young people becomes critical. With today’s youth representing the largest demographic in history, particularly in developing countries, their empowerment is crucial for driving positive societal change. Young people do not play a proximal role to future generations. Their agency is not that they are closer to future generations–every generation is a future generation (a future older, middle-aged, or younger generation). Instead, young people play a transitive role. Every generation yet to be born will be younger before they are older. Thus, if we set up the right positive multiplier effects for our young people, we set up every generation for success.
What is clear, is that with the number of tipping points the world faces today (from climate to conflict, to potential pandemics), the steepness of this multiplier is potentially the greatest it has been in history. We stand at the precipice of the last generations that can do something about challenges like climate change, and the first generations to consider how we face new risks and opportunities like artificial intelligence. All the while, we continue to fight the same challenges as our ancestors in increasing education, economic opportunities, and collective well-being.
Chapter four of the Pact for the Future and the annexed Declaration on Future Generations are key policy tools to help the global system concretize what our commitments and actions ought to be. The focus now needs to be on implementation and follow-through. Here, the 47th paragraph of the draft Declaration on Future Generations becomes the most critical. A Special Envoy for Future Generations, a high-level Forum on Future Generations, and a review report will be essential tools to ensure the ideas in the Declaration on Future Generations are not just ‘nice ideas’ but have an impact on the way we think about the three key pillars of the UN. Equally, the review of the Pact for the Future at the 83rd UN General Assembly session in 2028 must be complemented with action across multistakeholder partnerships such as ImPact Coalitions and other groups, across the next four years.
This is the UN leading a discussion to reframe how we think about the impact of our actions. It’s worth paying attention to.
Authors
Nudhara Yusuf is Executive Coordinator of the Global Governance Innovation Network at the Stimson Center and Co-Chair of the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Support of the Summit of the Future
Eliane el Haber is the Chapter 4 Analyst of the Summit of the Future Information Clearing House Bulletin and a Lebanese Education activist.
Additional Resources
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