UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Briefing on ‘Summit of the Future’ by Mr. Guy Ryder

Good morning.

Welcome to the press briefing of the Information Service of the UN in Geneva.

Today is Friday, the 3rd of November, and we are starting the briefing a little bit earlier because we have the great privilege to have with us the Under Secretary General for Policy, Mr Gir Ryder, who is here to give you a few information about his work and the preparations of the Summit of the Future.

I don't think anybody in this city needs to be told about Mr Ryder that we have had here for a long time as Director General of the International Labour Organisation.

He ended his tenure, but he was too good for us to let him go.

So he is now, as I said, the Under Secretary General for policy succeeding Folkert, who is now, as you know, **** Commissioner.

So, Mr Rider, without more ado, I'll give you the flow for a few introductory remarks and then we will take questions from the journalist.

Thank you.

Well, thank you very much and good morning for everybody.

Very nice to be back in Geneva.

There's a great deal happening in the world, a great deal on your minds.

And I, I want to take a moment of your time to draw attention to something which is very important in the United Nations calendar, which is a summit of the future, which will take place in New York next year on the 22nd and the 23rd of September during the **** level week.

So the Head of Government, Head of State level summit, I want to tell you a little bit about preparations for that summit and its purpose.

The summit was really born out of the UN 75 Declaration, the declaration of member States adopted on the occasion of the UN 75th anniversary, which was the occasion for a reflection about the future of the multilateral system, what we need to do to make it optimally fit for purpose to meet the challenges of today and of tomorrow.

Hence the title Summit of the Future.

On the basis of the declaration adopted UN75, the Secretary General published a major report, it's called our common Agenda, I guess you might be familiar with it and from Member States consideration of that report.

The Secretary General proposed firstly a Summit for the future, Summit of the future, excuse me, and a subsequently published a whole series of documents and I think you've got a, a summarised version of those documents about the substance that the summit of the future ought to look at.

What's the point of this summit?

I think the summit's purpose is to fully equip the multilateral system in a rapidly changing world with major new evolving challenges to be fit to meet those challenges.

So it has a dual purpose.

One is to address new and emerging challenges and see how the multilateral system needs to adapt to them.

But also, and it's not to be forgotten, to make good on the existing commitments that we have.

And that includes first and foremost the 2030 Agenda, which we know we're behind on.

Halfway through the 2015 20-30 journey.

We need to accelerate progress to deliver on the promises of the 2030 Agenda so that, if you like, is the setting for the summit of the future.

What has been decided so far?

Member States decided at the beginning of September what the scope of the Summit would be and what the component parts of a Pact for the future which will be adopted at the Summit would contain.

Let me start with the Pact for the future.

Member States have decided that this pact to be adopted in the Summit would have 5 chapters, 5 pieces, substantive pieces in it, and this is perhaps an important piece of my message to you.

Those five pieces are firstly, sustainable development and financing for development.

A major part of the discussion is how we need to reform the international financial system to make it fit for purpose, to deliver unsustainable development.

So that's the first piece.

The second piece is, and I think speaks to our current circumstances strongly, peace and security.

The Secretary General has published proposals for a new agenda for peace.

An original agenda for peace was published by Boutros Ghali in 1992.

The Secretary General is proposing a new agenda for peace which speaks to today's peace and security agenda.

That is the 2nd chapter of the pack for the future.

The third part is science, technology, innovation and global cooperation.

At the centre of this chapter is the idea of adopting a global digital compact.

That would be a set of commitments to enable us to manage technology, particularly digital technologies, to the benefit of all and the benefit of sustainable development.

A big piece of this story, as we're all aware, is artificial intelligence.

It will figure large, I think, in the pact, but it's also the subject of action by the Secretary General, who has just set up his own **** level Advisory Board on artificial intelligence last week and he's been at the Bletchley Park summit as well.

That's the third part.

The 4th part of the pact is youth and future generations.

The the idea of the Pact and the proposal of the Secretary General is to qualitatively improve the engagement of the United Nations with young people, to enable them to participate meaningfully.

And the word meaningfully, I think, is important in this context, in the work of the United Nations, and that requires as well that Member States step up their mechanisms for engagement of young people together.

Boxed together in the same chapter, but a bit different, is a notion of future generations.

The ambition here is the adoption of a declaration to be annexed to the Pact on the Rights of Future Generations.

And here this is different from youth.

It is how should and must the decisions that we take today take into account and be cognizant of the rights and interests of future generations.

Those 10 billion people who will be born before the end of this century, who do not exist yet, We have to take our decisions today with a view to their interests.

And the 5th and final Pact.

Part of the Pact is about the transformation of governance and here there is a package of issues that will need to be addressed.

Amongst them, you will not be surprised to hear is the issue of Security Council reform.

But there is much else as well.

The feeling being that we need to ensure that our governance systems reflect accurately both the needs of the world today and the realities of the world today as it exists.

We are moving towards a multi polar world and our governance systems need to reflect that.

My last comment on the pact is that cross cutting all of these chapters will be issues of human rights and gender, women and girls empowerment.

There is not a separate chapter on those issues but they will be cross cutters in the whole process.

Now we're moving forward the negotiating process, intergovernmental negotiating process is now getting off the ground.

The governments of Germany and Namibia are acting as Co facilitators appointed by the presence of the General Assembly.

They will lead in formal consultations from now until the end of the year.

And I think we can expect a 0 draught of the pact to appear probably in the early part of next year.

And that will of course be the beginning of what promises to be a complex process of intergovernmental negotiation in which, and this is my last word but not the least important word, this is of course a member state driven process.

But the involvement, consultation of multi stakeholders, different varieties of stakeholders in this process will be an important part of the preparation of the summit moving forward.

And I know that the Co facilitators that I have mentioned determined and committed to making that stakeholder engagement real and substantive.

I think that's the message I wanted to pass to you.

This is going to be, I think, a fairly major part of the life of the UN with everything else going on in the world over the next year.

And I want to thank you again for your attention to it.

Thank you very much, USG Rider.

I know you have in a few minutes to brief in the Member States, but I just would like to give a chance to the journalist to ask you questions.

Is there any in the room?

Otherwise I'll go to the platform.

So we have Michelle Legrand, who is our correspondent of Geneva Solution.

Michelle, thank you, Alessandra.

Thank you Mr Reddit for your.

Presentation.

My question is just these consultations.

And just in general, can you?

Explain a little bit.

If some of this process is going to happen in Geneva or or if this is going to be mainly.

New York Process.

Just to know.

Some of the things we.

Should be expecting here in Geneva.

Thank you.

Thanks for the question.

The negotiations themselves, we in a New York based that that that that's clear.

But your question actually allows me to make a really important point.

This is a whole of UN system endeavour.

If you look at the substance on the table for the Summit of the future and the 11 policy briefs that the Secretary General has published I think reflect this very well.

All parts of the UN system have an interest and are engaged in the preparation of the summit.

So that includes entities based in Geneva and the UN community in Geneva.

It also includes colleagues, for example, in in Vienna.

One of the pieces of the Summit of the Future is outer space affairs.

So that brings in our friends in Vienna.

So the answer to your question is that whilst negotiations are New York based, we will be making our best endeavours to come to New York, come to Geneva.

I'm here today to engage with the different entities here, to engage with Member State representatives and to engage with the NGO community who I'll be meeting this afternoon to make sure that this is fully inclusive of the different communities of the UN in different locations.

So I want to give that assurance and that ambition that we certainly have.

Nicamine, Bruce.

The New York Times.

Good morning.

Thanks for this.

You flagged the issue of UN Security Council reform.

It's not exactly an idea that has prospered in the past.

Could you just give us an idea of how this idea is going to be pursued?

And are the findings of this summit then going to be subject to a Security Council veto?

How do you expect that to work?

And secondly, your predecessor in this job, Mr Turk is anxious to get a bigger share of the UN budget for the Office of the **** Commissioner of Human Rights.

Do you see a significant redistribution of funding within the UN system as a result of this discussion?

Thank you.

Very difficult to answer your questions in in in in the sense that we're at the beginning of a negotiating process of which I and badly placed to forecast the the outcome.

The UN Security Council reform is not a new issue.

Of course it will figure undoubtedly importantly in the negotiations for the pact to the future, that 5th chapter on governance is a place where it will land.

That said, we know the history of UN Security Council reform.

We know the contentious nature and the difficulties involved, but I think it's fair to say as well that today the prospects of reform are probably better than they have been at any time in in recent decades.

When you have members of the permanent members of the Security Council speaking in the manner that they have.

We know that the issue is on the table in a way which has not been previously.

There are other processes going on, let me be clear, in parallel with an outside the the negotiations for the pack for the future.

But I think this is an opportunity to help to move things forward, probably not definitively for the summit, but in an important and serious way.

I would not expect in the light of the second part of your question that the Pact for the future would engage in budgetary considerations of the type that you've alluded to.

It's outcome, of course, whatever it might be in the Pact and the priorities that identifies may well have implications for budgetary allocations in the system, but I think that will have to wait for the outcome to become apparent to us.

Thank you very much Mr Rather, and I know you have to leave us.

So thanks for having come and briefed the journalist, though they were about 50 online.

So thank you very much for being with us.

Good luck with the work of the preparation.

Come back soon and keep us informed on how the event goes.

I'll ask you for one minute of interval.

We need to just reset the the podium and I'll be with you with the continuation of the briefing in one minute.

Briefing on ‘Summit of the Future’ by Mr. Guy Ryder - 03 November 2023