United Nations Civil Society Conference (2024UNCSC) in Nairobi, Kenya
May 2024
This conference which took place 9-10 May 2024 at the United Nations premises in Gigiri, Nairobi, was the first such UN conference held in the global South. Its purpose was to support the Summit of the Future slated for New York in September 2024. Back-to-back with this event, UNESCO held a half-day off-campus dialogue with a wide variety of national and international NGOs on 8th May 2024 to strategize for impact.
2024UNCSC was the 69th organized by the UN Department of Global Communications which “had never organized a conference of this size, which had attracted such a high level of interest …. by some 3,600 civil society representatives from 2,750 entities, along with around 400 representatives of 64 governments, seven International Governmental Organizations (IGOs), 37 United Nations entities and over 100 media reporters – Day 1, Morning Press Release | United Nations.
World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) was represented by a delegate including Dr. Leopold Mureithi, Dr. Alexander Shenderov, and Dr. Steven Lichty. This report, however, reflects the views of the first two members of the Federation. The process of contributing to the UN Summit of the Future is evolving. The WFSF aims to make a meaningful contribution, and this report is a part of that effort.
(Leopold Mureithi seated front row 4th from the right, in white trousers: UNESCO hosts networking event for education NGOs | UNESCO)
At the UNESCO event on 8th May 2024, Leopold Mureithi formally made a presentation on ways and means of how World Futures Studies Federation and UNESCO have and can collaborate. See box 1.
| Box 1: UNESCO and WFSF Collaboration This has taken many forms, including: UNESCO has financed participants from developing countries to attend WFSF events. Facilitated WFSF courses in Futures Studies in the Asia Pacific Region, Budapest, Egypt, DR Congo, and Malaysia. WFSF Members participate in UNESCO International Expert Meetings. WFSF contributes to written consultations by UNESCO. Joint WFSF-UNESCO publications include The Futures of Culture Series coordinated and edited by the late Professor Eleonora Barbieri Masini (1936-2022), the mother of futures studies. Proposals for the Future: UNESCO sustain student and researcher exchange programs, fostering global collaboration and understanding. UNESCO to press on keeping borders open for students, facilitating international education and knowledge-sharing. UNESCO to facilitate the establishment of national Futures Labs. Prompt the erecting of more UNESCO Chairs, especially in African universities. UNESCO to farm out consultancies to partner NGOs. There should be more scope for joint publications. WFSF can be the focal point for futures literacy, futures studies, and strategic foresight. |
The guiding theme of the 2024UNCSC was “Shaping a Future of Global and Sustainable Progress.” It was run in plenaries, workshops, stakeholder groups caucuses, and ImPACT Coalitions. Dr. Mureithi attended the Coalitions on Inclusive Global Governance; Artificial Intelligence; and Digital Governance.
The ImPACT Coalition on Inclusive Global Governance aims at advancing civil society initiatives to put people at the heart of global governance. This includes the campaigns for a World Citizens’ Initiative, a UN Parliamentary Assembly, a permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly and a UN Civil Society Envoy.
Paraphrasing, Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Governance Coalitions focused on principles such as safety, sustainability, and inclusion, with the aim of expanding significantly for all nations and people the potential benefits of powerful AI technologies while simultaneously mitigating their risks. They seek to improve global management of artificial intelligence and other cyber-technologies by leveraging science and technology and advocating for comprehensive cyber anti-harassment laws, to combat online abuse, and promoting digital literacy programs. Their goal is to foster a safe, inclusive, and empowering digital environment for everyone.
The issues canvassed at these Coalitions tallied well with the submission espoused in our document reproduced in box 2.
| Box 2: World Futures Studies Federation’s Core Competencies WFSF is an independent global peak body for futures studies scholarship founded in Paris 1973. It is a UNESCO and UN consultative partner and global NGO with members in over 60 countries. We bring together academics, researchers, practitioners, students and futures-focused institutions. WFSF offers a forum for stimulation, exploration and exchange of ideas, visions, and plans for alternative futures, through long-term, big-picture thinking and radical change. – www.wfsf.org Tested and tried futures research methodology, see our partner organization, the Millennium Project’s futures methodology 3.0, curated by Jerome Glenn et al, available at https://www.millennium-project.org/ WFSF is institutionally prepared to confront the Wicked Challenges facing humanity in the economic, social, political, environmental, cultural, and technological domains. Some of these are existential risks, matters of Shakespearian dilemma “to be or not to be.” Specifically on science and technology, we see two interrelated tracks, namely: Freedom to do research, development and innovation (RDI); and Urgent establishment of an international World Wide Court to prevent aspects that may be antihuman, misanthropic, hateful, xenophobic, intolerant, bigoted, and disparaging regarding humanity and its diverse parts. We propose an institutional reform to transforming the United Nations into the United Humanity Organization (UHO), reflecting a commitment to a collaborative and inclusive global governance perspective. WFSF Offers to work, together with others in the hub for “ImPACT Coalitions, in co-creating our preferred futures characterized by “peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet.” WFSF can be the focal point for futures literacy, futures studies, and strategic foresight – overarching skills “essential for the 21st Century.” (UNESCO). |
Alex Shenderov established a booth in the exhibition arena of the Conference venue where he put up posters, engaged the visitors, and distributed brochures. Very creative and impactful. See box 3 about the choice of the world to live in; and box 4 on United Humanity Organization (UHO).
| Box 3: Which of these two futures would you choose to live in? “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” Club of Rome “You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. We do not have the option to keep growing forever. It’s as simple as that.” Gaya Herrington “…the consequence of degrowth is a zero-sum society. With the size of the economic cake essentially fixed or shrinking, the economy is a theatre of conflict. One group, or one country, can only make itself better off at the expense of another.” Wim Naudé “…scholars and the public alike began to view the East as a region whose vast natural resources were wasted on racially “inferior” peoples like Slavs and Jews.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “…we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature, in producing this mortality” Thomas Robert Malthus “Malthusianism has always been closely linked to racism, because the desire for population control has as its foundation the hatred of others.” Robert Zubrin “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself” Chris Korda, Church of Euthanasia “Population control is the conscious regulation of the number of human beings to meet the needs, not just of individual families, but of society as a whole.” Paul Ehrlich “The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers… A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.” Aldous Huxley “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” David Hume “Because of human pollution and overpopulation, the birth of a human being, like the death of a tree, is, to planet earth, a tragedy.” Mokokoma Mokhonoana “We are a plague on the Earth” David Attenborough “Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.” Howard Zinn “In Africa there is a concept known as ‘ubuntu’ – the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievement of others.” Nelson Mandela “…there should be no boundary to human endeavor. …If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before. I hope for the best. I have to. We have no other option.” Stephen Hawking “The choice is: the Universe…or nothing.” H.G. Wells “Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems.” Sun Tzu “Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we aim high, we’ll get better results.” Ted Chiang “Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.” Jesse Jackson “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” Mahatma Gandhi “Resources come out of people’s minds more than out of the ground or air.” Julian Simon “The human mind is our fundamental resource.” John F. Kennedy “The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often, they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.” Carl Sagan “I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it just by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it. Survive. Endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes will endure. Will endure longer than his home planet — will spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his noble essential decency.” Robert A. Heinlein |
| Box 4: United Humanity Organization? An existential threat to human civilization is hiding in plain sight. This peril is likely more serious than nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption – combined. To overcome any of those challenges, we need to defeat it first. And UN 2.0 –United Humanity Organization – can make this happen. What constitutes this threat is the prevalent adversarial worldview: the zero-sum-game thinking whereby someone’s advantage means someone else’s disadvantage. The Nations are clearly anything but United; instead, everyone is myopically looking for ways to “contain” others and restrict their access to what is believed to be “limited resources”. This inevitably involves dehumanizing and disparaging your competition, – which is most of humanity. Xenophobia, misanthropy and cynicism perpetuated by this approach threaten the very survival of our civilization: without overcoming these, we are powerless to deal with any problems beyond the scale of our own neighborhood. Meantime, our challenges are increasingly global: humanity, collectively, owns this planet, – ready or not. And responsible ownership of a planet (outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals) is clearly incompatible with tribalism and xenophobia. Global Sustainable Progress won’t happen unless a majority of stakeholders believe that it can, and should. The massive resource investment needed to keep global civilization going can only happen by deliberate commitment, not by accident. Humanity needs faith – in itself. Believing in humanity is, counterintuitively, a challenge. We are the most numerous, prosperous, healthy, peaceful and educated humankind ever. We did somehow get from the caves to the Moon, created the Sphinx and the relativity theory and the World Wide Web, and dreamed of planting seeds from our beautiful home across the Universe. Yet our public intellectuals call humanity a plague or cancer. Media portrays humanity as an 8-billionlocust swarm gobbling up Earth’s last resources. And it becomes aself-fulfilling prophecy: when one believes to be among locusts, it’s rational to gobble up the resources while there is still something left to gobble up – and to push “less deserving” peers from what’s seen as a shrinking pie. In fact, every “finite resource” was worthless dirt until humans converted it into a resource through innovation and collaboration. Human history is a story of learning to engage progressively bigger, more diverse groups of people in solving bigger, more challenging problems. That’s how we got from the caves to the Moon landings and the World Wide Web. Our challenges are global now: humanity owns planet Earth. A viable global civilization needs a positive, inclusive self-image to avoid a global thermonuclear resource war – and to, instead, run its home planet responsibly. What could such self-image look like? How do we get to see others, – often very different from us, – as valuable partners in pursuit of some ambitious, worthy common goal, much bigger than our petty squabbles? What would this mean in practice? Solution Outline One possibility is the Homo Exploratoris idea. Universe is a shooting gallery (just look at the pockmarked Moon), so every habitable planet will eventually be sterilized one way or another – unless it evolves an ambitious spacefaring civilization that protects it, and/or plants its copies elsewhere (in case protection fails). Earth is evolving a civilization like this: ours. In the long run, humanity could be Earth’s best hope. If, that is, we have enough faith in ourselves to try – and are lucky enough to succeed. (here is a book about it – available at Amazon and other outlets) Putting faith in humanity instantly changes the spectrum of available options to address both short-term and long-term global challenges. And the “limited resource” delusion can be instantly cured by the simple exercise of going outside on a clear night and looking up, at the vast unclaimed Universe. There is a lot of Space to transform in the image of the home planet we love. That’s humanity’s mission, if we choose to accept it – our promise to Mother Earth. Humanity is a force for good. With this long-term mindset, our immediate problems become opportunities for collaborative win-win solutions, and diversity becomes a resource for constructive competition. We have a long way to go, and lots to learn and do, – and no time to waste on misanthropic, self-destructive delusions. Immediate Practical Steps Within this framework, United Humanity Organization, – UHO, – has a central mission, namely to lead a transition from obstruction to synergy: the win-win approach whereby diverse humans are recognized as partners. See examples of action items below. UHO can spearhead the development of a Global Leadership Lab, and persuade stakeholders to both contribute to it and benefit from it. The Global Leadership Lab conducts interactive gaming-based participant-guided research into available futures. The goal is to get decision-makers from member countries to help each other learn the consequences of their potential decisions without having those decisions play out in the real world, at a great cost to their constituents. UHO membership has to have a value, – i.e. be a privilege, not a right. In practice, membership would automatically expire, and have to be renewed, every 1-2 years – the renewal subject to obligations to conform to UHO Charter, contributing to UHO budget, and approval by other members representing at least 90% of humanity. Failure to get readmitted would result in loss of services by UHO agencies (IKAO, IMO, ITU etc.). UHO media accreditation has to have a value. A proactive accreditation policy can give a competitive advantage to the outlets that resist the temptation of cheap sensationalism and don’t spread libelous drivel about people that have a different skin color, religion, culture, or even political beliefs, than their readers do. UHO can spearhead the development of a Global Power Grid, and persuade stakeholders to both contribute to it and benefit from it. This development can, using only available resources, bring humanity to 100% renewable energy in 20 years. This would, besides resolving the energy and climate crises, catalyze massive investment of finance and technology in the global South, produce a productive and profitable outlet for the capital and know-how of the global North, create billions of well-paid jobs throughout the world, and give geopolitical rivals better things to do than sabotage (or shoot at) each other. |
Alexander Shenderov and Leopold Mureithi at 2024UNCSC in Nairobi, Kenya
The second day of Nairobi 2024 United Nations Civil Society Conference was mostly spent in activities related to ImPACT coalitions (https://www.un.org/en/2024uncsc/impact-coalitions-faq): multistakeholder associations advancing certain key reform initiatives leading up to and beyond the Summit of the Future. The broad range of initiatives covered by various ImPACT coalitions (https://www.un.org/en/2024uncsc/2024-uncsc-impact-coalitions-programme) included Earth Governance reform, UN Charter reform, creation of International Anti-Corruption Court, Inclusive Global Governance, Funding for Community Action on Sustainable Development, Artificial Intelligence, Gender Equality, Rights of Future Generations and many others.
A WFSF representative at the Conference, Alex Shenderov, participated in two coalition launch meetings: Earth Governance (https://earthgovernance.org/campaigns/impact-coalition/) and Science and Policy Solutions for the Planet (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cK1ZquhD3GByn4xTCxG5_E0htVxOGStD/view?usp=sharing). The former is a nascent movement to mobilize an Earth Governance Alliance – an organization describing itself as “a coalition of civil society organizations working in cooperation with like-minded governments, legislators, experts, private sector actors and other stakeholders to strengthen existing environmental governance mechanisms and establish additional mechanisms”. It is co-founded by three organizations: World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy, Climate Governance Commission and Citizens for Global Solutions. WFM-IGP was established in the 1930s to promote stronger, democratic world governance leading toward a world federalist system. The Climate Governance Commission was established in 2020 by the Global Challenges Foundation (.5B SEK/$46M endowment). The commissioners include Mary Robinson, Chair of the Elders and First woman President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; “Africa’s Iron Lady,” Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; María Fernanda Espinosa, the President of the seventy-third session of the General Assembly; Nobuo Tanaka, Former Executive Director, The International Energy Agency (IEA), and many other internationally recognized figures. CGS is a national (US) affiliate of WFM-IGP; Isaac Asimov was one of their National Advisory Board members. There appears to be an opportunity for engagement for WFSF, both with the Alliance as a whole and its constituent organizations.
The Science and Policy Solutions for the Planet ImPACT coalition aims to “build science-driven agile and future-oriented capacities”; “promote knowledge and science transfers”; “align our financial and economic system with the science”; and “develop metrics and data capabilities”. The coalition is co-convened by UN University Centre for Policy Research, Global Challenges Foundation, Igarapé Institute, Stockholm Environmental Institute Africa, the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, the Baha’i International Community, and the Club of Rome. Among their goals are “building up our foresight capacities” and “work with the newly created UN Futures Lab”. Again, this could be an opportunity for constructive engagement.
Please note that these two ImPACT coalitions are not the only ones where WFSF may become involved. The list of coalitions launched at the Conference and their brief descriptions can be found here: https://www.un.org/en/2024uncsc/2024-uncsc-impact-coalitions-programme.
Washington, D.C., USA, 2 February 2024 – In preparation for the zero draft of the Pact for the Future, the co-facilitators of the UN Summit of the Future: Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow, Germany and Namibia invited written inputs from Major Groups and Other Stakeholders (MGoS), other civil society networks and organizations, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and academia. Stakeholders were encouraged to reflect on the scope of the Pact for the Future outlined in the UN General Assembly Decision 77/568 and to provide concise, concrete and action-oriented recommendations structured around the elements of the Pact for the Future.
The call for written inputs concluded on December 31, 2023 resulting in a wealth of submissions that will play a crucial role in shaping the zero draft [click here to read more]. Among the contributors, the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) has submitted a noteworthy input, reflecting the commitment to advancing global futures studies and shaping a sustainable and equitable future [Click here to download the full text].
This document will serve as a critical foundation for the Pact for the Future, outlining the strategies and actions needed to address the complex challenges facing the world today.
Stay tuned for further updates as we approach this historic milestone in global collaboration and commitment to a sustainable future.
ECOSOC
WFSF has been a Special Consultative Partner with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) since 1987. ECOSOC is the UN Platform on social and economic issues. Please review the UN chart below to see where ECOSOC is placed within the UN family. It is at the same level as the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.
UNESCO is actually one of the Specialised Bodies under the umbrella of the UN ECOSOC (like WHO, IMF, UNIDO and others).
Our Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC means we may participate in high-level UN Events at the UN Headquarters in New York, Geneva and/or Vienna. WFSF Executive Board Member Dr. Dana Klisanin is the WFSF President’s Envoy to the UN Meetings in New York.
Follow the link to learn more about ECOSOC
DESA
WFSF collaborates with the Department of Economic & Social Affairs. DESA is a part of the UN Secretariat providing an activities arm of ECOSOC.
Follow the link to learn more about DESA
UNDP
We have a new collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) which allows us to use their UN Teamworks Knowledge Sharing Platform for implementing our projects. Our LEALA project members in DR Congo, Malaysia and Egypt were the first participants for this new service . The UNDP is one of the Programmes under the umbrella of the UN General Assembly (like UNICEF, UNITAR and related organisations such as the WTO).
Follow this link to learn more about UNDP
Follow this link to the Millennium Project report Five UN Foresight Elements of Our Common Agenda: Results of a Real-Time Delphi Study: A Report to the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.
Follow this link to a UNDP study that considers COVID-19 impacts on the SDGs, conducted with the Fredrick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver.
Follow this link to the FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH REPORT by UNDP and the Fredrick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver titled: Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals in a World Reshaped by COVID-19
Follow this link to learn more about UN’s Informal High-level Committee on Programmes Strategic Foresight Network
Follow this link to learn more about the UN Strategic Planning Network
Download CEPA strategy guidance note on Strategic planning and Foresight
Loading…
Reload document 
Open in new tab Download Headlines and Key Remarks from the General Assembly Consultations on the Summit of the Future – 13, 14 and 15 February 2023