First UNESCO Chairs Seminar “An Overview of the Pact for the Future”
Date and time: Tuesday 5 March 2024, 15:00 to 16:30 (Paris Time)
Languages: English and French
Format: Zoom – Please click here to register
Seminar description
The UN Summit of the Future: Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow, New York, 22-23 September 2024, aims to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global
governance, reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives. An action-oriented outcome document, Pact for the Future, is expected to be agreed by Member States through intergovernmental negotiations on
issues they decide to take forward.
The effects of inequality, poverty, conflict, climate change, and the adverse impacts of technology – amongst others – are causing severe threats to the world. As the UN Secretary-General asserted in Our Common Agenda, ‘Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough’. Awareness of potential catastrophe and dedication to transformation for better futures provides opportunities to mobilize collective intelligence towards just and sustainable futures for all.
Speakers in the first UNESCO Chairs Seminar of 2024 will provide an overview of the zero draft of the Pact for the Future. UNESCO Chairs and other experts will have the opportunity to react to the zero draft, which comprises a chapeau and the following Chapters:
- Sustainable Development & Financing for Development
- International Peace and Security
- Science, Technology and Innovation and Digital Cooperation
- Youth and Future Generations
- Transforming Global Governance.
If agreed by governments, a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations would be annexed to the Pact for the Future.
In this Seminar, UNESCO Chairs will interact with invited experts to discuss the zero draft Pact for the Future, and to consider how UNESCO Chairs and research partners might engage with these issues from their diverse intellectual and geographic vantage points. Subsequent UNESCO Chairs Seminars (April to July 2024) will focus on the substance of each of the 5 themes.
** Register here **
Provisional Agenda
An Overview of the Pact for the Future Tuesday 5 March 2024, 15:00 – 16:30 (Paris time) | |
15:00-15:10 | Opening remarks Sobhi Tawil, Director, Future of Learning and Innovation Division, UNESCO |
15:10-15:25 | ‘The Pact for the Future – zero draft’ Zazie Schafer, Director, Bureau of Strategic Planning, UNESCO (tbc) |
15:25-15:50 |
UNESCO Chairs and research partners · Charles Hopkins and Katrin Kohl, UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability, York University, Canada · Vernor Muñoz Villalobos, Head of Policy & Advocacy, Global Campaign for Education; & Education and Academia Stakeholder Group (EASG), Costa Rica · Susan Osireditse Keitumetse, UNESCO Chair on African Heritage Studies and Sustainable Development, University of Botswana, Botswana |
15:50-16:25 | Comments and discussion Moderator: Zazie Schafer, Director, Bureau of Strategic Planning, UNESCO (tbc) All participants |
16:25-16:30 | Closing remarks Keith Holmes, Research Coordinator, UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme, Future of Learning and Innovation Division, UNESCO |
