The Future: On Hold
UNGA 81 opens, the next Secretary-General is yet to be chosen, and two of the Pact's follow-through mechanisms are both waiting on appointment
The 81st session of the General Assembly opened on Tuesday 8 September under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that Delivers for All”. Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh has taken the gavel from Annalena Baerbock, and High-Level Week runs from 22 to 28 September, with the General Debate opening on the 22nd.
I have been watching the UN’s own tracker for the Pact for the Future, which lists each commitment, names the entity responsible, and says where things have got to. Paragraph 32(a) of the Declaration on Future Generations is the one that takes note of the Secretary-General’s proposal to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations. The status there reads, more or less, that because of ongoing reform efforts and the organisation’s financial situation, the appointment is temporarily on hold, pending further decisions by Member States, including in the context of UN80.
It is tempting to eye-roll and mumble something about the UN and its glacial pace. The Secretariat did its part in terms of reference and costings for the post, they were finished by the July 2025 deadline, and are sitting there, in the tracker’s phrase, ready for consideration when relevant. The UN is in a genuinely difficult financial position, the UN80 reform process is working on mandates and duplication, and restoring trust is never a quick process. What has not happened is the money. Paragraph 32(a) takes note of the proposal but it doesn’t request it, and nobody has budgeted for it.
It does however shed some light on where the Declaration on Future Generations currently sits in the queue. With consensus reached almost two years ago, the one piece of dedicated leadership the Declaration pointed to is on hold with no commitment stated to move it.
A window to influence
Outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres finishes his second term on 31 December, and there are currently eight candidates in the field: Ivonne A-Baki, Michelle Bachelet, María Fernanda Espinosa, Rafael Grossi, Rebeca Grynspan, Olara Otunnu, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett and Macky Sall.
The Security Council does not publish straw poll results, and the ballots are shredded after each round. Reporting after the second poll on 21 August nonetheless put Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana narrowly ahead, with eight “encourage” votes, three “discourage” and four no opinion. No candidate has yet reached the nine votes needed.
Further rounds are expected through the autumn and a recommendation could come in October, or much later. Kofi Annan did not clear the Council until 13 December 1996.
This means that for the next few weeks, these eight contenders are refining what they say they stand for, and their teams are reading everything.
I cannot think of a better moment to be specific about the need for long-term governance and the central role future generations must play in the transformation of the UN.
The next Secretary-General will be the person who either appoints a Special Envoy for Future Generations or does not. They will be the person who commissions the implementation report the Declaration requires for the high-level plenary meeting at UNGA 83, and who leads the organisation into the Pact’s 2028 review. Almost every decision that determines whether the Declaration becomes operational or remains a statement of intent will be taken on their watch.
Meanwhile
The Beyond GDP work is further along, and worth watching for exactly the same reason.
Member States asked for it themselves, in Action 53 of the Pact, building on a commitment already made in the 2030 Agenda. The Secretary-General’s High-Level Expert Group reported on 7 May with Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet, proposing a dashboard of 31 indicators to complement GDP. Around half are drawn directly from existing SDG indicators, so countries could begin using them immediately. The report also proposes monitoring the capital that supports future well-being, including natural, human, social and institutional capital, which is about as close as international statistics gets to saying out loud that we are spending down something our grandchildren will need.
None of it is agreed, which is what the intergovernmental process is for. The call for stakeholder contributions closed on 26 August, and a facilitator’s elements paper is the next step.
The process was given two co-facilitators, Spain and Guyana, appointed in April by Annalena Baerbock as President of the 80th session. Guyana’s Ambassador withdrew from the role in June, shortly after being nominated for Secretary-General, leaving Spain to carry it alone. Facilitator appointments are made by the President for a given session, and the 80th session ended on Monday 7 September. No new appointment has been announced.
As with the Envoy role, the agreement exists, the people to carry it are contingent, and the gaps open up in the handovers between sessions rather than in any withdrawal of intent to make good on the commitments.
What follow-through actually looks like
If you have a meeting during High-Level Week, or a delegation you can email, or a candidate’s team you can reach, the useful asks are narrow and answerable.
Give the appointment of the Special Envoy for Future Generations a date. Put a straight question to Member States: on what date, and under which decision, will the hold on the future be lifted? A commitment on hold indefinitely and a commitment on hold until March are different things.
Ask what the implementation report will contain. The Declaration requests the Secretary-General to report on implementation for the high-level plenary at UNGA 83. Reports get written to fill the shape the community asks for, if the asking happens early enough.
Treat 2028 as a deadline that starts now. Member States themselves flagged early preparation for the Pact review at a briefing convened by Germany and Namibia in February.
Connect the measurement work to the mandate. A dashboard that complements GDP is one of the few concrete tools that makes long-term costs visible in present-day decisions. It belongs in the same conversation as the Envoy, so that momentum and pressure can swell behind these interconnected issues.
Keep the future open
The case for keeping the future open that we put forward in the Future Generations Communications Playbook is that no one generation currently in the room is wise enough to decide on behalf of everyone who follows.
Keeping the future open is what democracy itself hinges on. If people feel that choices and futures are closed off to them already, they will stop participating altogether, and now, more than ever, we need all hands and votes on deck.
Populations are ageing faster than anyone forecast. The US Census Bureau reported this year that people aged 65 and over now outnumber children under five worldwide, for the first time in recorded history. As electorates age, the interests of the young risk being consistently outvoted. Every single person who cares about our children and our children’s children needs to actively ensure that those interests are represented in as many arenas as possible.
Institutions that carry a long view need someone whose job survives the political cycle, with a clear mandate and reporting accountability. This is why the appointment of a Special Envoy for Future Generations matters so much. Without someone in the role, long-term language drifts into something decorative, adopted enthusiastically and operationalised never. Otherwise known as futures washing.
The question I would put to anyone with access this month, whether they are running for the top job or briefing someone who will vote on it, is this: what will you keep open, and what date will you commit to?
If you are going to be in New York during High-Level Week and would find any of the playbook material useful, do reply and tell me what would actually help. The story bank is still growing, and we would rather build what people need than guess.
