SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE DECLARATION

OF

THE COUNCIL OF PRESIDENTS OF

THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

New York, 21 September 2024

The Council of Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York on 21 September 2024, under the chairmanship of H.E. Dr. Han Seung-soo, President of the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Council focused its meeting on the “Pact for the Future” and its two annexes, the “Global Digital Compact” and the “Declaration on Future Generations”, to be adopted at the Summit of the Future on 22-23 September 2024. The Council commended the United Nations for convening the Summit of the Future and fully endorsed the Pact of the Future and its 56 Actions as well as its annexes as a laudable and viable path for our common future.

The Council noted with great satisfaction the Action 42 of the Pact of the Future through which the Member States at the Summit will commit themselves to increase the efforts to revitalize the work of the General Assembly and reaffirm the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations and to that effect:

(a) Further enhance and make full use of the role and authority of the General Assembly to address evolving global challenges, in full compliance with the Charter.

(b) Enhance ways in which the General Assembly can contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, in particular by taking action in accordance with the UN Charter.

(c) Stress the need for the selection and appointment process of the Secretary-General to be guided by the principles of merit, transparency and inclusiveness and with due regard to gender balance and regional rotation and take into account during the next, and in subsequent, selection and appointment processes the regrettable fact that there has never been a female Secretary-General, and encourage Member States to consider nominating women as candidates.

The Council is fully committed to helping the President of the 79^th Session of the Assembly, H.E. Mr. Philemon Yang, and the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly, to start an innovative process to implement these goals in the most effective way possible, in cooperation with relevant academic and non-governmental institutions, as appropriate. At its next meeting in Seoul in October 2024, the Council plans to draw up a work program for their implementation starting at the 79^th Session of the Assembly. It will also discuss the recommendations of the Global Digital Compact regarding the global governance of artificial intelligence and best ways to implement them.

In a section entitled “Transforming Global Governance”, the Pact for the Future notes that our multilateral system is under unprecedented strain. In our Doha Declaration of 3 May 2024, the Council noted with deep concern the many armed conflicts proliferating in the world and underlined the need for urgent action by the United Nations to prevent escalation of these conflicts. But as the relations of key members of the UN Security Council, all major nuclear powers, have rapidly deteriorated during the last years the potential of escalation ultimately to nuclear level has not diminished - in fact it has increased. Conventional and nuclear arms race and nuclear threats have dangerously intensified. Nuclear arms control regimes and safeguards against fatal miscalculations in the command of nuclear weapons have been dismantled. Artificial intelligence guided command, control, intelligence and delivery systems of nuclear weapons are posing new uncharted threats scenarios. The Council stresses the importance of international efforts to promote nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament and security, and to build trust and reduce tensions among the nuclear powers.

Increased military expenditures of world major economies also take vital resources from the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals and addressing catastrophic global warming. The fracturing of global economic flows, international trade, and global supply chains makes the global situation even more difficult. The General Assembly should urgently address the issue of polarization of our multilateral system by considering appropriate confidence-building measures and other steps to reduce nuclear escalation risks. The Council plans to help in this endeavor as well.

In our Doha Declaration, the Council requested the Secretary-General of the United Nations to put forward a comprehensive peace initiative on Gaza based on the two-state solution. In discussing the Ukraine war, the Council called for the launch of a credible peace process based on the Istanbul agreement of April 2022 which includes the neutrality of Ukraine along with a decision on the self-determination of the occupied territories in the form of a referendum under the auspices of the United Nations. As the peace negotiations have not started and the war has dangerous escalation potential, the Council urges the UN Secretary-General to present options for a possible peaceful resolution of the war using the various tools the UN has had available in resolving other major conflicts during past decades. A Great Powers Peace Conference on Ukraine should be seriously considered in this connection.

The Council reiterated the urgent need for the reform of the United Nations, particularly its principal organs. In this context, it called for stepped-up efforts towards the revitalization of the UN General Assembly, reform of the UN Security Council, strengthening of ECOSOC, and restructuring of the UN Secretariat in order to ensure that they can effectively respond to the current deep crisis in multilateralism that is seriously undermining the role of the United Nations as envisaged by the UN Charter, particularly in regard to the maintenance of international peace and security.