The Pact for the Future: What does it mean for our work and to forced displacement?

In this issue of our quarterly advocacy blog, we want to briefly unpack some key features of the newly adopted international consensus document, the Pact for the Future, that was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 22-23 September 2024. We also make some observations on its impact on the future of advocacy in relation to forced displacement

Like other similar consensus documents, the Pact was adopted at a high-level meeting convened for that purpose, named the Summit of the Future. We expect that at least for the next four years of the Pact, up until the first review period, there will be a lot of conversation about the commitments (most of which are not new). Our team reviewed some of the most important aspects that are related to our work, in particular those that are directly linked to responses to forced displacement and the communities that we work with.

The Pact is a new international consensus document (such as the Grand Bargain), aimed at reinvigorating the efforts of the international community in addressing the most pressing global challenges of our time. In a total of 56 calls for action (Actions), the Pact articulates renewed commitments of the international community, geared towards the creation of a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient future for people and the planet, done so around five major thematic areas. Key amongst these is the objective of reforming existing structures of global governance, with particular focus on the Security Council of the UN.

It is under the second thematic area of the Pact, related to international peace and security, that the question of forced displacement is addressed. Action 15 of the Pact in particular talks about the plight of people affected by humanitarian emergencies, including those experiencing forced and increasingly protracted displacement. In paragraph 36(b), within Action 15, the Pact announces a commitment to:

Address the root causes of forced and protracted displacement, including the mass displacement of populations, and implement and facilitate access to durable solutions for internally displaced persons, refugees and stateless persons, including through equitable international burden- and responsibility-sharing, and support to host communities, and with full respect for the principle of non-refoulement of refugees.

The extent to which this will be followed by concrete and measurable steps, to be taken by all Member States of the UN, is to be seen in the future. We note that over the past several years, particularly since the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in 2018, there has been a lot of conversation about alleviating the plight of forcibly displaced persons, in which context several new initiatives have been launched. While these are positive developments, the reality is that not much has been achieved in terms of stemming the root causes of forced displacement. It appears that the Pact is trying to put a new focus on this particular issue, by specifically talking about the need to address not just the root causes of forced displacement but that of forced and protracted displacement. This may hopefully inspire a new set of actions in curbing the root causes of the problem of forced displacement, instead of focusing on the after-effects of the problem. After all, prevention is better than the cure.

While we acknowledge the relevance of renewing commitments from time to time, we also recognise that most recent efforts of the international community have been severely constrained by two inter-related problems. The first problem is related to the fact that most of these renewed commitments end up becoming hollow promises. These commitments are often compromised by the political agendas of ‘superpowers,’ particularly those of the so-called five permanent members of the UN Security Council. That is perhaps why the issue of reforming the Security Council also features as one of the major themes of the Pact. In the face of such critical shortcomings of the United Nations system, promises and commitments would have little value unless decision-making powers are also shifted away from the political interests of the superpowers. It is perhaps because of this reason that there now seems to be an unmistakable pattern in the manner how the international community, under the auspices of the UN, deals with its repeated failures: adopting a new international consensus every five or so years in which commitments made in previous similar documents are recycled almost in the same fashion without having no real impact in the lives of billions of people around the world, particularly the poor and the most marginalised. The best example in this regard is the case of the former Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), now known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The second problem, which in a way is very much related to the first, is also perhaps the most persisting challenge of our time, characterised by some experts of international relations as “compassion fatigue.” This denotes the notion that as human beings we seem to be getting used to unspeakable reports and figures of human tragedies, so much so such accounts no longer (sufficiently) shock us and we even seem to have learned to live with the unspeakable. Indeed, over the past few decades the world has seen multiple, complex and mind-blowing cycles of humanitarian crises, particularly those necessitated by armed conflicts; their intensive frequency means that they had a profound effect on our collective human agency. That is the crisis of humanity the international community finds itself in, in which context it is trying to reinvigorate its responses to various forms of humanitarian crises. So, in that sense, while the periodic renewal of commitments can be seen as a necessary step in maintaining the promises of the UN Charter, challenges of our time require something more than that.

In our view, part of the periodic exercise of renewing commitments should also be the realisation of the fact that we are no longer in an era of “We Are the World,” whereby people could be easily mobilised by a relatively smaller amount of campaigning, ultimately doing a tremendous amount of humanitarian work. We are conversely in an era of “compassion fatigue.” Ours requires unique solutions that are premised on galvanising a new sort of international consensus, not just recycling grand promises that have been articulated every now and then in various declarations, pacts or compacts. The solution might be in some sort of a formula that can mobilise global citizen action of a massive scale. This may require rethinking existing models of advocacy and campaigning that focus on the interconnected nature of crises and emergencies, and as such the relevance to all of us of these events. It could perhaps also entail nurturing a new generation of activists, who are empowered with agile techniques, like the sort of revolutionary “business making” model we have seen in the emergence of Khaby Lame; the Senegalese-Italian social media giant, who emerging from zero, became the most-followed user on TikTok (as of September 2024).

In summary, the Pact for the Future offers a crucial opportunity to address the root causes of forced displacement through renewed commitments and innovative advocacy. However, to make a meaningful impact, it is essential that the commitments with the Pact are seen as relevant to everyone and as such endorsed and owned by us all.