A Pact for the World’s Poorest

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Sustainable Development Goals

Deodat Maharaj, Managing Director of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries

Deodat Maharaj,
Managing Director of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2024 (IPS) – Last month, world leaders gathered at the time of the UN General Assembly in New York and agreed on a pioneering Pact for the Future. This global accord has implications across a broad range of issues that affect every country. It offers much hope for the poorest and most vulnerable countries on the planet, known as Least Developed Countries (LDCs).


The world’s 45 LDCs are home to a billion people who face systemic underdevelopment marked by poverty, inadequate health systems, poor infrastructure and limited access to education and technology.

While some progress has been made during the last decade, less than a fifth of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track to be met. For example, only around 60% of children in least developed countries complete primary school despite improving literacy rates across the globe. Healthcare disparities are also stark, with maternal mortality rates averaging 430 deaths per 100,000 live births in low-income countries compared to 13 per 100,000 in wealthier nations.

The Pact for the Future, along with its two annexes, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations, offers an inclusive roadmap aimed at accelerating progress towards the SDGs. By also leveraging advancements in science, technology and innovation, the framework seeks to dislodge decades of stagnation and inequality.

Bridging the massive digital divide, which is most pronounced in poor and indebted countries, will be critical for accelerated progress. Only 36 percent of people in LDCs are connected online, and buying a smartphone costs 95 percent of an average monthly income. In general, low-income countries also have a lower level of educational attainment and fewer trained professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The Pact for the Future outlines several key commitments: On digital cooperation, the Global Digital Compact presents targeted actions for a safer, more inclusive, more equitable digital world by closing the digital divide and expanding inclusion in the digital economy.

On sustainable development and financing for development, the Pact reaffirms the 2030 Agenda and places the eradication of poverty at the centre of efforts to achieve it. Amongst the proposed actions, it pledges to close the SDG financing gap and strengthen efforts to address climate change, which is disproportionately impacting LDCs.

On financial reform, the Pact seeks an overhaul of global financial systems, including by granting developing countries a greater voice in decision-making. It seeks to mobilize additional financing for the SDGs and generally making finance more readily available. The Pact also addresses the unsustainable debt burdens of many LDCs.

This novel Pact for the Future has the potential to give a push to the development agenda across the developing world, but especially so in LDCs. However, for success, there are some prerequisites. Firstly, there is the matter of financing.  It is good to see the welcome emphasis on boosting financing for developing countries and making it more accessible.  With finance, the possibilities are unlimited. Without finance, progress will once more be stymied. Therefore, the international community must match words with action.

Secondly, the role of business as an essential partner is key. A government-centric approach on its own cannot and will not work. More specifically, there must be attention to the micro, small and medium-scale enterprises sector, which accounts for the majority of businesses and generates the bulk of employment in most developing countries. Systematic support for digitalisation, innovation and the application of technology to this sector will create jobs and opportunities whilst boosting inclusive growth.

Thirdly, multilateralism is vital. The Pact for the Future has enormous potential, with the power to materially shift the dial for least-developed countries. However, it will require international cooperation, sustained political will and strong accountability mechanisms. If realised, this bold initiative could become the catalyst for new technological investments that can help shape an equally bold future for the world’s poorest.

At its core, the UN’s Pact for the Future is a blueprint for renewed cooperation in a fragmented world and offers much hope. There may not be another such opportunity. Let us seize the moment.

Note: Deodat Maharaj is the Managing Director of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries and can be contacted at: Deodat.Maharaj@un.org

IPS UN Bureau Report

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What is the World’s Most “Demanding and Impossible Job”?

Civil Society, Democracy, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2024 (IPS) – When Dr Gamani Corea, a former Secretary-General of the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was holding court in the delegate’s lounge, I asked him what he thought of the bitter dispute between then Secretary-General (SG) Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996) and the United States over the Egyptian’s determination to win re-election for a second term.


Dr Corea, a product of two prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and a one-time Sri Lankan Ambassador to the European Economic Community (EEC) in Brussels, pondered for a while, and declared: “I cannot really figure out why anyone in his right mind would ever want such a demanding job.”

And perhaps he was right.

Trygve Lie of Norway, the first UN Secretary-General, once remarked the SG’s job was “the most impossible job on this earth.”

Still, the post of SG, in contemporary history, has attracted at least three ranking officials from their respective country’s highest political hierarchies: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, acting Foreign Minister of Egypt, Secretary-General Ban ki-moon, a former Foreign Minister of South Korea and the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal.

The SG, for all intents and purposes, is the UN’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) who is virtually subservient to 193 political leaders, including presidents, prime ministers, reigning monarchs, foreign ministers and even UN ambassadors.

But he also has no means of implementing UN resolutions or a standing army to enforce them.

Guterres, who has taken a strong stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and publicly condemned the devastating killings of civilians in Gaza has come under fire, mostly from Israeli politicians and senior officials, who have not only called for his resignation but also declared him persona non grata (PNG), banning him from entering Israel.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former UN Under-Secretary-General and one-time Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, told IPS the incumbent Secretary-General recently lamented to the media that “Well, it is absolutely true that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has very limited power, and it’s also absolutely true that he has very little capacity to mobilize financial resources. So, no power and no money.”

“That is the reality which every Secretary-General faces and have been aware of”, said Ambassador Chowdhury.

“That is also known generally to the people who follow the United Nations regularly and thoroughly understanding the functional complexity of the world’s largest multilateral apparatus. Why then this reality surfaces and brought to public attention only when the UN leadership fails to carry out the mandated responsibilities?”

This “very limited power”, as worded by SG Guterres, should be highlighted as often as possible to avoid unnecessary and undue expectations of the global community about the UN and its top leadership.

“No Secretary-General has pointed out these limitations as he campaigned for the post and on assuming the office, he said. Current SG Guterres was no exception. He would have been realistic and factual if he had pointed out the limitations – better termed as obstacles – to his leadership as he took office in 2017, and not in 2024 after being in office for nearly eight years.”

Irrespective of the major ongoing wars, the built-in operational weakness and inability of the world’s most important diplomat has always been there, said Ambassador Chowdhury, former Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001).

Ian G. Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association USA, told IPS it is time for the pandering to stop. Former Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan’s shredding of the UN Charter should have been be taken as Israeli abrogation of the Charter, but barring the Secretary General indicates that Israel has no part in the organization, as should banning UNRWA and the threat to confiscate its assets in Jerusalem to build illegal settlements on occupied territory.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got Al Capone for tax evasion – and now is the time for Israel to be squeezed out for its manifest procedural breaches of the UN Charter and Vienna Convention even if the two veto holders cover for it on genocide, said Williams.

“Being declared PNG by Israel has probably saved Antonio Guterres’ reputation, which until now has been dimmed by his relative caution in addressing Israeli depredations. To be attacked by an enemy of mankind and international law is no bad thing”.

But now there should be follow-up, he pointed out.

“The members hip of the United Nations should now be carving away at Israel’s membership prerogatives since, even if states are reluctant to act on the state’s egregious violations of international law, it has now clearly broken the basic rules of international diplomacy.”

“Will it take (Israeli Ambassador) Danny Danon dancing across the General Assembly podium with the SG’s head on a platter to provoke action? asked Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA).

Asked about the PNG declaration by Israel, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We saw this announcement, which we see as a political statement by the Foreign Minister. And just one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”

“Look, this issue of PNG has been announced by different countries at different times towards a representative. And as we said every time, we do not recognize that the concept of persona non grata applies to UN staff”, he added.

Time and again, said Ambassador Chowdhury, “I have pointed out that “essentially there are four main constraints to the effectiveness of the Secretary-General”.

Firstly, veto and veto-wielding members of the Security Council, which influences matters in all areas of UN system’s work; secondly, promises and commitments made by the Secretary-General as a candidate to secure his election; thirdly, aspiration to get re-elected for a second term from day one of the first term; and, fourthly, the labyrinthine UN bureaucracy.

“We need to revisit the operational credibility of our much-cherished world body. What was needed in 1945 to be enshrined in the UN Charter is to be judged in the light of current realities.”

If the Charter needs to be amended to live up to the challenges of global complexities and paralyzing intergovernmental politicization, let us do that. It is high time to focus on that direction. Blindly treating the words of the Charter as sacrosanct may be self-defeating and irresponsible. The UN could be buried under its own rubble unless we set our house in order now, declared Chowdhury.

“I am often asked, during ‘questions and answers’ segment following my public speaking, if I want to recommend one thing that would make the UN perform better, what would it be. My clear and emphatic answer always has been “Abolish the Veto!” Veto is undemocratic, irrational and against the true spirit of the principle of sovereign equality of the United Nations”.

In an opinion piece in the IPS Journal in March 2022, I wrote that “Believe me, the veto power influences not only the decisions of the Security Council but also all work of the UN, including importantly the choice of the Secretary-General.”

The same opinion piece asserted that “I believe the abolition of veto requires a greater priority attention in the reforms process than the enlargement of the Security Council membership with additional permanent ones. Such permanency is simply undemocratic. I also believe that the veto power is not ‘the cornerstone of the United Nations’ but in reality, its tombstone.”

Abolishing the veto would also release the election of the Secretary-General from the manipulating control of the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council.

After choosing nine men successively to be the world’s topmost diplomat, “I strongly believe that it is incumbent on the United Nations to have the sanity and sagacity of electing a woman as the next Secretary-General in 2026 when the incumbent’s successor would be chosen,” he added.

“I would also recommend that in future the Secretary-General would have only one term of seven years, as opposed to current practice of automatically renewing the Secretary-General’s tenure for a second five-year term, without even evaluating his performance,” he noted.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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