ODA Topics 2
Summit of the Future
– “Pact for the Future” for Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and for Future Generations –
Then Prime Minister Kishida delivering a speech at the Summit of the Future (Photo: Cabinet Public Affairs Office)
Then Foreign Minister Kamikawa delivering a speech at the Preparatory Ministerial Meeting for the Summit of the Future
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the United Nations. Yet, the international community is facing compound crises including poverty, climate change, and infectious diseases. It is necessary to implement efforts to make further progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Now more than ever, the international community must overcome division and confrontation, and strengthen cooperation to address these pressing global challenges.
In September 2020, in the declaration on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, UN Member States pledged to strengthen global governance and requested the Secretary-General to report back with recommendations to respond to current and future challenges. In response, in September 2021, the Secretary-General submitted a comprehensive recommendation titled “Our Common Agenda,” which includes a proposal to hold the Summit of the Future. The then Foreign Minister Kamikawa attended the Preparatory Ministerial Meeting for the Summit of the Future convened in September 2023.
On September 22 and 23, 2024, the Summit of the Future was convened on the margins of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly with the aim of restoring trust in UN and addressing the achievement of SDGs and new global challenges through international cooperation. At the summit, an outcome document titled “The Pact for the Future” was adopted, which declared to implement 56 actions across five chapters: “Sustainable development and financing for development,” “International peace and security,” “Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation,” “Youth and future generations,” and “Transforming global governance” to protect the needs and interests of present and future generations. In particular, in the development context, the document underscores commitments to take bold, ambitious, accelerated, just, and transformative actions in order to implement the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,”Note 1 to achieve the SDGs and to leave no one behind, to invest in people to end poverty and strengthen trust and social cohesion, and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls as a crucial contribution to progress across all the SDGs.
At the Summit of the Future, the then Prime Minister Kishida highlighted the importance of the “rule of law,” “human dignity,” “investing in people,” “nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” and “UN Security Council reform” to ensure a future defined by peace, freedom, and prosperity, and called on the international community to share responsibility and unite under multilateralism.
To effectively address global challenges, it is imperative to strengthen the functions of the UN, including the Security Council reform, and to advance global governance reforms. Looking ahead to the coming decades, Japan will promote development cooperation toward achieving “human dignity,” which is the foundation of all international cooperation, and the spirit of “leaving no one behind” in the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” This will be done while promoting the rule of law and under the concept of human security, taking into account the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus (HDP nexus) as an opportunity to strengthen strong and effective multilateralism centered on the UN. Furthermore, Japan will actively contribute to efforts toward the comprehensive achievement of the SDGs and beyond, in cooperation with the international community.
Note 1 See the glossary.