Duties to the Future

The future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands. It lies also in the hands of today’s younger generation who will pass the torch to future generations. 

2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

The idea that generations living today have an obligation to future generations is one of the foundational concepts of the United Nations. The pledge to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war is its earliest and clearest manifestation. This moral and philosophical current has influenced some of the UN’s most notable global reflections and policy agendas – from the 1987 Brundtland Commission report to the 2012 Rio+20 conference, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Grounded in the 2030 Agenda and with strong connections to the Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda report, the 2021-2024 strategic narrative agreed by the High-level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) prioritized the issue, with a thematic pillar on "duties to the future".

Further to HLCP's decisions at its forty-second session, the newly formed HLCP Core Group on duties to the future, co-led by UNEP, UNESCO, UNICEF, and UNU and consisting of 19 UN system entities, began its work by exploring and unpacking the concept of "intergenerational equity" in a discussion paper entitled "Duties to the Future through an Intergenerational Equity Lens", prepared for the Committee's forty-third session. The paper defined key concepts, outlined major challenges and opportunities, and recapitulated the role of the UN system in drawing on the concept of intergenerational equity. 

At its forty-fourth session, the Committee welcomed the proposal to develop a set of common principles for the UN system that would serve as a basis for a shared understanding of the concepts of future generations and intergenerational equity. The resulting United Nations System Common Principles on Future Generations were approved by HLCP at its forty-fifth session in March 2023 and endorsed by CEB in May 2023. 

At the same session, the Committee affirmed the need to unpack the Common Principles with a view to supporting their operationalization in UN system entities. A key contribution to doing so is a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Duties to the Future developed by the Core Group and published in January 2024. The FAQs aim to provide conceptual clarity and support a UN common language on complex issues and concepts associated with future generations and intergenerational equity. 

Reflecting on its work, the Core Group offered a set of final conclusions and recommendations at its forty-eighth session, at which time the Committee noted the Group's closure further to the completion of its tasks and delivery of its mandate. 

The Common Principles and FAQs together serve to guide the work of UN system entities and also informed the intergovernmental deliberations on the Declaration on Future Generations, annexed to the Pact for the Future.