Globethics on the Road to the Summit of the Future
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On 3 November 2023, I had the pleasure of joining an exchange at the United Nations Office in Geneva with Guy Ryder, Under-Secretary-General for Policy in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General on the preparation of the Summit of the Future which is to be held in September 2024.
The 2024 UN Summit has a challenging agenda amidst multiple challenges of inequality, wars, climate crisis, and risks of emerging technologies. It will also be different from various summits in past years.
One major difference should urge political leaders to honestly learn lessons from the failures of many summits that issued plenty of principles and initiatives. Why is the world "woefully off track" to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 deadline? Why do the poorest 50% have only 8% of the world's total wealth while the richest 10% of people own over 70% of global wealth? Not to mention the humanitarian disasters in the wake of ongoing wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa.
On the road to the Summit of the Future, civil society organisations can play an indispensable role, notably in evaluating the (lack of) global progress in social, environmental, and economic terms; in promoting humanity and peer learning; in suggesting and acting on fundamental changes, and in contributing to a new path for the planet.
As a knowledge-based and policy-oriented international non-governmental organisation, Globethics is committed to equipping individuals and institutions for ethical leadership. Working with partners, we support leaders with the mindsets and tools to translate the values and principles written in the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights into ethical decision-making at community, national, and global levels.
On the road to the Summit of the Future
During the course of the next year, Globethics aims to deepen our engagement with governments, civil society, academics, the private sector, and international agencies and maximise the impact of ethics on our common future, especially in the areas covered by our focus priorities for the strategic period 2023-2027, which align closely with the five chapters of the UN's Pact for the Future.
For example, based on the results of our public panel and closed-door roundtable during Geneva Peace Week in November 2023, we will launch a Geneva Compact process on the ethics of AI that aims to break silos and connect various ongoing processes on AI ethics with the support of multi-sectoral, inter-regional, and trans-disciplinary and intergenerational dialogues.
As part of the process, Globethics has made agreements to work together with UNESCO and its regional offices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to support capacity development through training courses, policy dialogues, and AI ethics tools.
Key learnings from these processes in Geneva and at regional levels will contribute to key milestone events in 2024 towards the Summit. They include ongoing negotiations on the Global Digital Compact in Geneva, the 2nd Ethics of AI Summit in Slovenia in February, the SWIS+20 Forum High-Level Event in May 2024, and the Civil Society Summit in Kenya in May 2024.
Empowering future leaders for ethical action
The future will and should be different because youth and future generations will soon become leaders. That is why Globethics invests in education. In June 2024, Globethics will host the ICDE (International Council of Open and Distance Learning) Leadership Summit under the theme of ethical leadership in the age of AI. The objective is to convene leaders in the education sector from around the globe to reimagine and re-create education for the future where students, teachers, and leaders not only have skills but also, more importantly, are equipped with the ethics and values to guide these skills.
Immediately before the Summit of the Future, Globethics will convene the renewed edition of the Global Ethics Forum in Geneva in September 2024. The Forum is to create new, effective, inclusive and network multilateralism with a focus on economy, education, environment, technology, peace and governance. 200 leaders from multiple sectors representing all five continents and various age groups will convene to address global challenges through the lens of ethical leadership and transdisciplinary cooperation.
While we are preparing for the Future Summit, Aristotle’s statement remains a true alarm: "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all". That is perhaps the single most important element that can bring us to a future that is meaningful.