Summit of the Future Explainer: Improving the way we run the world…and beyond

A catastrophic climate crisis, a surfeit of nuclear weapons, or unregulated AI: when it comes to potentially existential threats to humanity, there are plenty to choose from.

When the United Nations was created nearly 80 years ago, a shell-shocked world was emerging from a conflict so devastating that world leaders were prepared to erect institutions designed to ensure that nothing comparable would ever happen again.

Whilst that impetus is still relevant today, there is a widespread consensus that the tools created at the UN’s outset need a major overhaul to make them fit for purpose.

At the Summit of the Future, a two-day conference due to be held at the end of September, world leaders will engage in discussions aimed at bringing about these changes and will bring up the thorny subject of one of those tools which has elicited heated debate over the years: how to reform the Security Council.

A credible Security Council

“We cannot accept that the world’s pre-eminent peace and security body lacks a permanent voice for a continent of well over a billion people…making up 28 per cent of the membership of the United Nations.”

On August 12, 2024, UN Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the Security Council, at a meeting called by Sierra Leone, during its month-long presidency of the Council, to address “the historical injustice” and enhance “Africa’s effective representation”.

“The fact that Africa continues to be manifestly underrepresented on the Security Council is simply wrong, offending as it does both the principles of equity and inclusion,” added Dennis Francis, at the time the President of the General Assembly.

These remarks from the highest echelons of the UN were the most recent of decades of salvos questioning what many see as the outdated make-up of the Council.

“There’s a massive upswell in recognition on the part of Member States themselves, including the five permanent Members (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States), [you know these have to be in alphabetical order!!] that some form of change is needed,” says Michele Griffin, Policy Director of the Summit of the Future.

“The Secretary-General has been very clear that change is needed to the composition of the council so that it is more trusted and more effective and more legitimate in the eyes of the people that it’s trying to serve.”

Avoiding ‘star wars’

The way the world’s nations behave in outer space has been on the UN’s radar ever since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The growth of space activities, dominated by the US and the Soviet Union, was inextricably linked to the Cold War arms race between the two superpowers, and fears that missile defences could be extended to locations in outer space. Ten years later, in 1967, UN Member States first pulled together an Outer Space Treaty, to regulate activities in outer space.

More recently, there have been calls for stronger governance structures surrounding these activities, as private sector use of space rapidly grows, and new spacefaring nations join the ranks of the established players.

“There are a lot of entities innovating without any clear sense of which actions are responsible, and which are risky,” warns Michael Spies, Senior Political Affairs Officer at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs. “Who decides what is hazardous or not? What if an object developed by a private company can be used to attack someone else’s satellite?”

These are the kinds of questions, says Mr. Spies, that governments are having to grapple with as more and more objects are sent into the skies, by more and more countries and companies.

“We have seen an explosion of private sector activity, that’s really kind of pushing out the boundaries of what is happening in outer space. We are also seeing major inter-governmental initiatives to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, credible programs to push for human spaceflight to Mars, and different concepts for extracting resources from the moon and from the asteroid belt. The governance framework really needs to be elaborated to facilitate this kind of rapid growth in a secure and sustainable way.”