Key considerations ahead of the 2024 UN Summit of the Future – ITPC White paper – May 2024

The United Nations has described the Summit of the Future (September 22-23, 2024) as a
pivotal platform for enhancing international cooperation, serving as a unique opportunity to
address and bridge critical gaps in global governance and foster a more integrated and
collaborative approach to the daunting global challenges of the twenty-first century.

Whilst the impact of unfettered climate change is an undercurrent throughout the current draft of the Pact of the Future, it has three glaring omissions:

• the acknowledged criticality of global health and health equity as an ongoing dominant global challenge;
• the intersectionality of health and the climate-health nexus to the success of the SDGs;
• and, the central role played by communities to ensure healthy, prosperous and resilient societies.

‘COVID-19 amnesia’ or not, there are three resounding lessons learned from our most recent global pandemic:

1. Our world is more interconnected than ever. Health-related outbreaks somewhere mean health-related outbreaks everywhere.

2. Health is a pivotal driver of economic growth, prosperity, security and resilience
against systemic shocks for all countries, communities and households.

3. Communities are at the center of all system shocks and shoulder the brunt of any
crisis. They are also at the center of all crisis responses. Communities are our first
responders, the early detectors of crisis, a trusted source of information and services,
and often the ‘gap-filler’ when formal health systems are over-stretched and buckling
under the strain of system shocks.

Ahead of 9-10 of May 2024 – Nairobi, Kenya, UN Civil Society Conference, ITPC is releasing a white paper: From the Ground-Up: How Community Action Redefines Global Crisis Management to support the urgent call to action to do things differently.

However, our premise is that transformational change can only happen effectively, efficiently and sustainably, when it occurs from the ground up. We argue the need for a paradigm shift away from disparate concepts of sustainability to those of collective resilience.

Countries and communities cannot be resilient without preparedness, and preparedness cannot be achieved without communities.

Community leadership, the full, equal and meaningful participation of communities, community data and community-led monitoring, and community-led action are the crucial countermeasures to system shocks and the foundation for strong, vibrant and resilient societies.

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From the Ground-Up: How Community Action Redefines Global Crisis Management

Community Information Brief: What is the UN Summit of the Future – Why and How Should I Engage?

One Engagement opportunity: the UN Civil Society Conference (9 – 10 May, Nairobi – Kenya)