UNESCO Chairs Seminars Series 5: Towards a Pact for the Future

Our world is at a turning point. ‘Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough’, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, stated in Our Common Agenda. The complex intersection of the climate crisis, accelerated technological innovation, growing inequality, democratic backsliding, conflict and insecurity require restoration, repair, renewal and transformation.

The UN Summit of the Future in September 2024 aims to strengthen international cooperation. The rationale for the Summit recognizes that ‘Multilateral governance designed in simpler, slower times, is not adequate to today’s complex, interconnected, rapidly changing world’. A key outcome of the Summit will be an action-oriented document, the Pact for the Future, that will commit to collectively addressing global challenges and strengthening multilateralism.

This new series of UNESCO Chairs Seminars, Towards a Pact for the Future, will introduce the zero draft of the Pact and explore the topics of its five chapters: (i) Sustainable development & financing for development; (ii) International peace and security; (iii) Science, technology, innovation and digital cooperation; (iv) Youth and future generations; and (v) Transforming global governance. Each of the Seminars will stimulate critical and research-based dialogue on these topics in the context of efforts towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the imperative of Reimagining Our Futures Together, as called for by the International Commission on the Futures of Education.

Participants are encouraged to bring forward ideas generated in previous UNESCO Chairs Seminars, as well as from the Report of UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs 2022 Conference, Transforming Knowledge for Just and Sustainable Futures. These include the need to advance transdisciplinarity, to value multiple knowledge systems, and to harness collective intelligence for collective action.

Objectives

• To promote awareness of and engagement with current discussions on the future of international development and cooperation;
• To provide opportunities for collective reflection, dialogue and intellectual exchange and actions among researchers, scientists, students, and others;
• To strengthen and facilitate collaborations among members of the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme and other partners for research, teaching and other activities.