During an informal meeting of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), ministers and senior officials from UN Member States took stock of implementation of the Pact for the Future. According to an informal summary of the proceedings, speakers repeatedly highlighted that “the Pact’s success will be measured not by the ambition of its text but by tangible improvements in people’s lives.” Participants agreed that the 2028 review of the Pact and discussions on a post-2030 agenda represent the “window for converting the Pact’s 56 actions into measurable outcomes.”

The UNGA’s informal meeting to review the Pact convened on 14 July 2026, alongside the 2026 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

In her opening remarks, UNGA President Annalena Baerbock said the stocktake represents an opportunity to share best practices and lessons learned to translate the Pact’s commitments into tangible results on the ground. She highlighted three priorities, urging Member States to:

  • Make the Pact a practical delivery framework for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;
  • Anchor implementation of the Pact in the promise of the UN, “We the Peoples,” including by safeguarding the needs of future generations and leveraging the contributions of civil society, the private sector, academia, young people, and cities and local communities; and
  • Build a path to the UNGA’s 2028 review of the Pact through a meeting at the level of Heads of State and Government at the beginning of the Assembly’s 83rd session.

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Addressing the meeting, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed painted a complex geopolitical landscape marked by debt pressures, conflict, climate impacts, and declining resources for development. She called attention to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, which disrupted energy, food, and fertilizer supplies. Mohammed said the SDGs remain the benchmark, the Pact – the political compass, and the UN80 Initiative – the operational vehicle for delivering on both.

Reflecting on progress towards the Pact’s commitments, Mohammed highlighted at least USD 700 billion in additional multilateral development bank (MDB) lending capacity, an operational Borrowers’ Platform, a new UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) dialogue on credit ratings, and ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) surcharge reform. On ways to measure progress, she noted the Beyond GDP proposal, delivered by the High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) within a year and the intergovernmental process that has commenced to act on it.

Director of the UN University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR) David Passarelli reported on the Civil Society and Stakeholder Dialogue held earlier that morning between the UNGA President, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, and civil society representatives. He relayed that participants framed the Pact as “an accelerator for the SDGs, an extension of the SDGs’ promise to people, and a mechanism that has helped address gaps in the sustainable development agenda and empowered regions to pursue governance innovations toward better-resourced, more peaceful societies.”

A roundtable on delivering for people and the planet focused on:

  • National ownership and country-level delivery, with speakers sharing national experiences with distinct national delivery mechanisms and implementation challenges; and
  • SDGs 6 (clean water and sanitation), 7 (affordable and clean energy), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), and 11 (sustainable cities and communities) – the Goals under the HLPF’s in-depth review in 2026, with delegations reporting uneven but tangible progress and highlighting persistent structural constraints.

A roundtable on making multilateralism fit for the future discussed, inter alia:

  • Financing for development (FfD) and the international financial architecture, with several participants citing the Compromiso de Sevilla as a concrete framework for modernizing the international financial architecture and calling for predictable, long-term financing and for simplified, preferential trade access for least developed countries (LDCs);
  • The UN80 Initiative as the operational vehicle, with many describing the Pact for the Future and the UN80 reform process as complementary and as “two sides of the same coin”;
  • Digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) governance, with some highlighting national digital transformation strategies and others calling for binding regulatory safeguards for AI and for comprehensive governance frameworks that extend to outer space and cyberspace; and
  • Future generations, with a group of Member States highlighting examples of national-level uptake of the Declaration on Future Generations and the integration of future generations considerations into the UN80 reform initiative’s workstreams.

In a 29 July letter circulating the summary, the UNGA President noted “broad cross-regional support for accelerating implementation of the Pact for the Future through national ownership, adequate financing and effective multilateral cooperation,” along with “the complementary role of the UN80 Initiative and the importance of civil society and other stakeholders in translating commitments into tangible outcomes.” [Taking Stock of the Pact for the Future: Informal Meeting of the General Assembly] [Pact for the Future] [SDG Knowledge Hub Sources]