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Three documents the UN is hoping will be adopted by 193 nations at a summit in 10 days lack transparency and use ambiguous language.

The ‘Pact for the Future’ dilutes the paramount importance of human rights.  The ‘Declaration on Future Generations’ raises questions about who can legitimately represent the interests of hypothetical future generations. And the ‘Global Digital Compact’ is an attempt by the UN to place itself in the driver’s seat to manage and control the digital revolution for all nations.

With these three documents, the UN is pushing for centralised global governance with itself at the helm.

The Summit of the Future being held on 22-23 September, was initiated by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres through his 2021 report entitled ‘Our Common Agenda’; an agenda to “forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like.” 

The UN’s aim is that the Summit will adopt the Pact for the Future with its annexes the Declaration on Future Generations and Global Digital Compact.

Three New Pacts to Be Approved at the UN Summit

The following is a precis of an article written by David Bell and Thi Thuy Van Dinh and published by the Brownstone Institute.  You can read the full article HERE.

This is the fourth part in a series looking at the plans of the United Nations (UN) and its agencies designing and implementing the agenda of the Summit of the Future.  Previous articles analysed the impact of the climate agenda on health policy, the UN’s betrayal of its own hunger eradication agenda, and the undemocratic method of using former leaders and the wealthy to back the UN’s agenda.

In the draft Pact for the Future, the UN describes global crises that call for global governance. But can we trust the scriptwriter who is the only contestant for that governor’s seat?

The trust in the UN was seriously undermined in 2020, as the UN’s World Health Organisation’s policies led to mass impoverishment, loss of education, child marriage, and rising rates of preventable diseases. The response has been to blame the virus, not the unscientific approach.

Although the covid-19 response was ordered by national leaders, the UN actively pushed the disastrous one-size-fits-all measures including border closures, society shutdown, mass vaccination and removal of access to formal education, while simultaneously promoting censorship of dissenting voices. 

While covering up these crimes against humanity and avoiding accountability, the UN and world leaders intend to approve a set of 3 political, non-binding documents:

1. a Pact for the Future,
2. a Declaration on Future Generations, and
3. a Global Digital Compact.

All were placed under “silence procedure” and were planned to be approved with little discussion.

Pact for the Future: General, Generous and Hypocritical Promises

The latest version of the Pact for the Future (“Pact”) was released on 27 August 2014. The co-facilitators, Germany and Namibia, proposed to place it under “silence procedure” until 3 September. This meant that without objections, the text was declared adopted. Currently, there isn’t enough publicly available information to know whether it happened.

Paragraph 9 of the Preamble marks a major break from, and a misunderstanding of, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) and the underlying tenets of modern international human rights law:

By equating “sustainable development” and “peace and security”  with “human rights,” this is a dangerous slope even for a non-binding text as it has removed human rights from being paramount for the UN and good governance.

The later statement in paragraph 13: “Every commitment in this Pact is fully consistent and aligned with international law, including human rights law” is clearly not consistent. The contradiction here is either unintentional or coming from a misinterpretation of the UDHR.

The Pact, with 60 actions grouped under various themes, contrasts with well-written documents like the UDHR. Its 29 pages are filled with generalisations (sometimes utopian) and internally contradictory statements, that enable almost any future action to be justified and commended.

At the multilateral table, the UN uses the narrative of future “complex global shocks” (Action 57), defined as “events that have severely disruptive and adverse consequences for a significant proportion of countries and the global population, and that lead to impacts across multiple sectors, requiring a multidimensional multistakeholder, and whole-of-government, whole-of-society response” (para. 85) to establish emergency platforms that it will coordinate.

This new narrative, gaining prominence during covid, may appeal to leaders who avoid taking full responsibility. However, crisis management by the UN may resemble the widespread lockdowns we’ve already experienced. And like the covid response, it is based on a fallacious exaggeration of the truth, turning natural events into signs of impending doom.

Declaration on Future Generations: Why the Need, for Whom and Why Now?

The latest version of the ‘Declaration on Future Generations’ (“Declaration”) was also placed under silence procedure until 16 August. However, opposition raised against this draft has led to it being reviewed for renegotiation.

(Note: A ‘Notice and Declaration on Public Participation’ as prepared by Shabnam Palesa Mohamed that people can use to serve on their country representatives to the UN, notes that the silence procedure on the Declaration on Future Generations has been broken.  However, the UN has withheld which countries voiced objections to this Declaration.)

The draft Declaration includes the UN-ese narratives of “intergenerational dialogue” and “the needs and interests of future generations.”  Both appear very ambiguous despite the use of attractive terms.

Who can represent the past, the present, and the future, for dialogue? Who decides on which dialogue? What legitimate actions may be taken? Moreover, is it acceptable to sacrifice the welfare of present generations in the name of preserving the needs and interests of hypothetical future generations, when we have little idea of their context or needs? Who are the future generations?

Most would agree, as humans always have, that building for the future was sensible, and we do this still. Why would countries suddenly need advice or leadership from a centralised UN bureaucracy to determine their “forward-looking” policies?

It’s obvious that any UN appointee to represent those who do not yet exist clearly will not have the legitimacy of a mandate from the hypothetical future generations he/she purportedly represents.

The concept of future generations was a construct in international environmental law. The Declaration of the UN Conference on Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972) made first reference to it, in a monumental break from the concept of individuality throughout the UDHR.

Years later, internationalists have hastily embraced the concept of future generations in multiple environmental and developmental treaties. It does make sense in some specific circumstances but this good intention has been quickly transformed into irrational actions to control the basic functioning of society.

Over the past few decades, vast multilateral (UN) and regional (EU) efforts have been deployed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the theoretical future benefit of others, but these have seriously restricted the development and well-being of many in present generations particularly in low-income countries.

Recently, the devastating impact of unilateral covid measures imposed on the world in the name of “the greater good” hypocritically targeted future generations. The emphasis on reducing education levels and ensuring intergenerational poverty has stolen from future generations to assuage the fears of some in our present ones.

With these examples in mind, any UN proclamations for “future generations” must be questioned, especially the new fear-mongering narrative of “complex global shocks.”

Global Digital Compact: A UN Attempt to Lead and Control the Digital Revolution

The latest version of the Global Digital Compact (“GDC”) dated 11 July was also placed under silence procedure. However, there is no information to determine whether it was adopted or not.

It is a relatively long document that is poorly thought through and poorly written, with multiple unclear and contradictory commitments.

For instance, paragraphs 23.d and 28(d) respectively contain the State’s commitment not to restrict ideas and information, as well as access to the Internet. However, several other paragraphs describe the “harmful impacts” of online “hate speech,” “misinformation and disinformation,” and note the State’s commitment to combat such information within and beyond their territory.

Unsurprisingly, the document fails to define “hate speech,” “misinformation and disinformation,” In such a diverse world, who decides what is “harm,” who is “wrong,” and who is “right”? If this is left solely to a State or a supra-national authority, then the whole document is a call for censorship of any opinion and information non-conforming with official narratives.  Some societies may have become used to living under such totalitarian conditions, but is it the UN’s role to ensure we all live this way?

The GDC also pushes for the UN system to play a significant and governing role in artificial intelligence (“AI”) globally.  It is a clear attempt by the UN to control, inject its view and reserve its own driver’s chair to manage the digital revolution for every nation. And it somehow manages to link the implementation of the SDGs to its ability to control and implement AI, and exert governance over the Internet, digital public goods and infrastructure, and AI too.

Conclusion

“Pacts,” “Declarations,” and “Compacts” do not have binding force. The UN system commonly uses these voluntary texts to call for funding, build projects and programs, and develop administrative task forces.  They are considered “gentlemen’s agreements” and as such, might be carelessly negotiated. However, they constitute a dangerous practice at the UN; an interlocking network of “soft laws” which can be hardened up quickly by the UN into binding texts when needed with little scrutiny.

Large bureaucracies, by nature, don’t shrink; they aim to expand and appear irreplaceable. The more people and teams employed to regulate, monitor, and direct the lives of “The Peoples,” the less freedom we enjoy and the more the world resembles the totalitarian regimes the UN opposes.

Buried in the diarrheal cascade of unimplementable gobbledygook of these texts, is an admission of the inability of both States and the UN to implement the SDGs by 2030.  Some may see the inability to achieve the SDGs as a shame (as do David Bell and Thi Thuy Van Dinh) but others will not. 

More importantly, the texts contain language that weakens post-World War II human rights, undermining ‘We the Peoples’ sovereignty and sanctity to the will of those few in power.

No one will hold world leaders accountable to these promises, but they broaden the burdens of future generations to the benefit of the UN system’s new-found partners and friends. And some 8 billion people at the bottom still have to pay for a few technocrats at the top to write, negotiate and approve them all.

Featured image: UN Pact for the Future, Summit of the Future