Turbocharging SDGs with Pact for Future

As we all know far too well, trust is in dangerously short supply around the world. We see sharp fragmentation and deep polarization. Conflicts causing horrific levels of death and destruction. Communities deprived of resources for development and resilience. Efforts to defer climate action and deny climate justice. And a frenetic race to build new technologies without guardrails.

The Pact for the Future is the world’s pledge to tackle such shared challenges together, and it calls for a more inclusive, effective, and fit-for-purpose multilateral system to follow through.

The UN80 Initiative is about equipping ourselves with the right tools to do the job — and making our Organization more coherent, more effective, and more prepared to deliver on the vision set by Member States.

The Pact for the Future and UN80 are interconnecting components of a single strategy of renewal. Together, they are designed to renew the vision and machinery of multilateralism, so the UN can further deliver with credibility and impact today and for generations to come.

I want to highlight five crucial points of convergence:

First, the Pact and UN80 both seek to strengthen all three pillars of the UN’s mandate and the connections between them. On peace and security, both emphasize the need for prevention and resilience.

The Pact is rooted in the idea that the international system must get ahead of risk, whether in conflict, climate, inequality, or technological disruption. UN80 carries that logic into institutional reform, moving from splintered responses to more seamless, joined-up, and preventive approaches.

On sustainable development, both recognize the need to accelerate efforts in the final stretch to 2030. The Pact is explicitly designed to turbocharge the SDGs.

UN80 recognizes that development delivery requires not just more commitment and more finance, but also a more joined-up UN development system, with stronger country-level support, closer regional coordination, better access to expertise, less duplication, and appropriate structural adjustments. Both also seek to advance a more effective, principled, and sustainable humanitarian system.

The Pact defines a more ambitious vision for how the international community responds to human suffering. UN80 aims to ensure the UN humanitarian system is faster, leaner, and more accountable to the people it serves — with a New Humanitarian Compact spelling out tangible ways to be more coordinated, more data-informed, more effective and cost-effective, with enhanced common services including supply chains; and better connected to long-term resilience and recovery. On human rights, both renew the commitment to place human rights at the center of prevention, trust-building, and sustainable peace.

The Pact reaffirms that human rights is a cross-cutting foundation for all of our work and underscores the need to protect civic space, strengthen accountability, and ensure marginalized groups can participate meaningfully in decision-making.

UN80 carries this forward by seeking to better integrate human rights across the UN’s work, including through the newly established Human Rights Group under the leadership of the Human Rights High Commissioner.

The second point of convergence is that both are anchored in a shared commitment to future-oriented, inclusive multilateralism that is accountable to the next generation. The Pact explicitly brings the interests of future generations into today’s decision-making — through the Declaration on Future Generations — and recognizes that current governance structures must evolve to address long-term risks. UN80 calls on the Organization to think and act with a longer time horizon: to be more agile, more future-ready, and more connected to youth, civil society and other stakeholders.

Third, both are fully aligned on digital transformation, data and responsible innovation. The Pact defines digital governance as a multilateral priority. The Global Digital Compact, as an annex to the Pact, recognizes that digital cooperation is now vital to the future of multilateralism.

UN80 translates this political recognition into organizational change, with a joint Technology Accelerator Platform, shared digital infrastructure, and a UN System Data Commons so our public data and statistics can connect across entities and pillars for stronger insights — all of this grounded in our UN 2.0 agenda.

Fourth, both speak to the urgent need for better financing and value for money. The Pact commits to mobilizing far more public and private resources for sustainable development, including reforming international financial institutions, improving debt sustainability, and closing financing gaps.

UN80 has a clear focus on building the organizational and financing model needed to sustain that ambition level by pushing for pooled and core funding, shared services, and harmonized support structures.

The fifth point of convergence is how both recognize that country level is where impact happens — and where credibility is won or lost. The Pact is ultimately a promise to “we the peoples” in countries and communities around the world.

UN80 strongly emphasizes better-coordinated and better-supported UN presences and capacities on the ground. That means Resident Coordinators with clearer authority, country teams that operate as one, and systems that reduce duplication and transaction costs and boost expertise.

(Excerpts of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ remarks to the Informal Meeting of the General Assembly Plenary on the Implementation of the Pact for the Future in New York on 24 April 2026.)