YEAR IN REVIEW: THE EVENTS THAT SHAPED THE UN AND OUR WORLD IN 2024

Despite persistent obstacles and global catastrophes, 2024 demonstrated that diplomacy can still deliver. The year saw hard-won triumphs like the Pact for the Future and international consensus for confronting the silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

At the same time, the year brought continued devastation wrought by conflicts and war from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine — and major developments in Syria after 14 years of brutal civil war.

2024 also closes with the completion of vital, if exceedingly fraught, negotiations to boost climate finance, while efforts to reach new agreements to end plastic pollution and improve pandemic preparedness ultimately stumbled at the finish line.

And once again, wherever there was conflict, disaster, or destruction, girls and women unfairly bore the brunt.

The year was rife with challenges and crises that deepened divisions and stymied progress, forcing world leaders and the diplomatic community to confront tough choices and carve out big wins against the odds, including a first-of-its-kind international agreement to upgrade the UN for the 21st century and beyond.

Rebuilding Trust Through Reform: The Pact for the Future
“Everything seemed to circle around preparations for the Summit of the Future and negotiations for the Pact,” says Julie Kofoed, Senior Director for Sustainable Development Initiatives, referring to the Pact for the Future, the landmark agreement adopted by UN Member States in September that also includes the Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations.
The Pact lays out 56 actions across five key areas, from safeguarding peace to financing the Sustainable Development Goals to governing new frontiers in cyber- and outer space. But as Julie explains, “The central connotation for the Pact is rebuilding trust through the reform of outdated institutions.”

Calls for greater representation of emerging powers and smaller nations on the Security Council grew louder this year. “That brought hope, at least in the youth space, that there are conversations happening about what reform actually needs to happen,” says Inés Yábar, Next Generation Lead Fellow. She also points to a series of intergenerational town halls held this year as another example of young people having a bigger voice in the future of the UN. “Knowing that our ideas are feeding into something as impactful as the Pact for the Future, and reforms that will make the UN more relevant, makes me feel like our generation is starting to be heard and included,” she says. The Pact for the Future has been central to moving these discussions forward, signaling a broader willingness to modernize the UN to better reflect the current geopolitical landscape.

Even the process of the Pact’s adoption reflected the shifting power dynamics. Ahead of the final vote, a small number of spoiler countries supported an amendment in a last-ditch effort to scuttle the Pact’s adoption. The move was overcome, and the Pact was adopted with strong leadership from African nations that rallied behind Namibia, a co-facilitator of the process, and the President of the General Assembly, Philémon Yang of Cameroon.

“It is our collective responsibility to ensure and guarantee a better future for current and future generations,” said the representative of the Republic of the Congo, speaking on behalf of the African Group.

The Pact also aims to give voice to the next generation, including through the creation of a special UN Envoy for Future Generations. “It is not just a document, but someone who’s directly advocating for the rights of future generations inside the UN,” Inés says.

This is in addition to, and different from, the steps the UN is already undertaking to formalize youth representation in global governance. As Inés points out, the Group of Friends of Future Generations is a powerful statement of intent. Spearheaded by the Netherlands and Jamaica, and announced at the Summit of the Future in September, Inés says she is “glad to see leaders from the Global North and Global South champion this alliance, which shows that the voices of young people and future generations are finally being prioritized.” “It’s more than just a commitment,” she continues, “it’s a movement with real political backing behind it.”

George Hampton, Executive Director for Global Policy and Multilateral Initiatives, says the Pact’s negotiations reaffirmed that global cooperation is not a zero-sum game of winners and losers, but one in which all people stand to win. “We can get more than just a transactional return from the international system should we choose to keep on investing in it,” he adds.

The Reverberations of Regional Conflict

Overwhelmingly, 2024 was a year marked by conflicts that destabilized whole regions and further polarized an already fractured planet; in fact, right now 1 in 5 children worldwide are either living in or fleeing from war. Escalating violence in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine has ruined millions of lives this year and damaged faith in multilateral institutions to maintain peace.

Julie, whose work includes elevating Least Developed Countries in the UN system, also notes the “disparity in how the international community has responded to Gaza versus Ukraine.” The stark discrepancies in the responses to each conflict have deepened division among UN Member States and eroded public perception.

Such unending violence is testing the UN’s capacity to deliver humanitarian aid and broker peace. Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, Vice President for Global Health Strategy, points to the temporary ceasefire that was negotiated so aid workers could vaccinate Palestinian children against polio. It was a brief glimmer of hope — until fighting resumed, leaving a health system in ruins. “This is a failure as far as multilateralism is concerned, because we have very clear rules of engagement when it comes to wars and how to treat health personnel,” Ahmed says. “The destruction of health facilities and health infrastructure was quite the dark spot on global health security.”

Despite the tireless dedication of the UN’s peacekeeping missions and humanitarian agencies, the situation in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine remains dire, with millions displaced and in need of urgent assistance. While the UN has been instrumental in securing aid access and pushing for ceasefires, brittle diplomatic talks for all three conflicts underscore multilateralism’s limitations in a reality where local and geopolitical dynamics often override international agreements.

War wasn’t the only tragedy pushing people from their homes and into hunger and poverty in 2024: For communities living on the frontlines of climate change, this year also brought record-breaking natural disasters that wreaked havoc on lives and livelihoods alike.

Struggling to Accelerate Climate Action

2024 was yet another year marked by devastating and extreme weather. Deadly heat waves, catastrophic floods, and raging wildfires revealed the fragility of the planet’s ecosystems and of our built environment. The global imperative to confront climate change is undeniable.

In the face of these disasters, the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, was widely considered the “finance COP” where the most climate-vulnerable countries pushed to unlock desperately needed resources. “The main task of this COP was to agree on a new collective climate finance target,” says Pete Ogden, Vice President for Climate and Environment. “Ultimately, the solution that was landed upon at the 13th hour was to set a new target of mobilizing at least $300 billion a year by 2035 from developed countries to support the mitigation and adaptation efforts of developing countries.” At the same time, countries agreed to an overall financing target of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035, which would include all finance flows, not just those that are mobilized through public investment by developed countries.

While triple the previous $100 billion target, due to expire in 2025, the new finance goal is a far cry from the estimated more than $1 trillion a year needed to help developing countries confront the existential crisis posed by climate change. For countries on the precipice of climate disaster, the target represents a “small portion” of what climate-vulnerable countries need to survive.

Pete, who led the UN Foundation’s delegation at COP 29, says while the new goal falls short, it is at least “a step closer to where we need to go.” If there is a silver lining, he says, it is the opportunity for greater accountability should countries fail to deliver on this target. A highly ambitious trillion-dollar target that secures only $150 billion in commitments leaves room for countries to abandon striving for the goal altogether, explains Pete, whereas “if you’re at $200 billion and the goal is $300 billion, then you’re sweating it more and people can actually identify who specifically is coming up short and needs to step up.” Pete adds, “Of course, the hope is that countries will overshoot the target, but that historically hasn’t been the case with climate finance.”

Also of note, Mexico and the United Kingdom submitted bold new plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With the announcement of Mexico’s plan, all of the world’s largest economies have now pledged to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by around mid-century, something that few experts would have predicted not long ago, according to Pete. And on the eve of the Paris Agreement’s 10th anniversary next year, countries finally resolved its last outstanding issue by reaching long-sought agreement on the rules for global carbon market accounting.

“It was the last open item under the Paris Agreement to actually get finally negotiated,” says Pete. “That Agreement is now fully negotiated and can now be fully implemented so that it can fulfill its potential.”

For Michelle Milford Morse, Vice President of Girls and Women Strategy, COP 29 represented a failing for the world’s girls and women, who she notes make up 80% of those displaced by climate change.

“Cynical and regressive political posturing among countries over the use of the word ‘gender’ — which had failed to provoke any fuss over the past decade — left an important consensus on the disproportionate burden from climate change suddenly abandoned,” she says. “As if half our human family has nothing to lose — or nothing to gain! — in our striving for a habitable planet.”

How Climate, Conflict, and Health Intersected

2024 made clear: No crisis occurs in a vacuum. The climate crisis is a health crisis, and the devastation and displacement caused by conflict exacerbate both.

Amid a rise in malaria, dengue fever, and other mosquito-borne diseases due to climate change, along with a rash of extreme weather events that displaced millions of people, this year brought renewed attention to the many ways climate change is affecting global health, especially in low-income, marginalized, and Indigenous communities.

“The climate-health nexus gained momentum across diplomatic discussions around health, agriculture, and labor,” Ahmed says, adding that this year’s political declaration on antimicrobial resistance, which was adopted at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September, was a unique opportunity to advance the climate-health agenda. The historic document established clear targets for funding and decisive action across sectors to confront the growing threat of AMR.

In addition to the AMR declaration, Ahmed points to two other significant developments. One is amendments to the International Health Regulations to strengthen global preparedness, surveillance, and response to health emergencies. The other is negotiations around the pandemic accord, which he describes as “still very much a work in progress.”

Despite an otherwise bleak prognosis for multilateral cooperation on global health, there’s a boost from regional groups. “We are seeing regions organizing themselves better,” Ahmed says. “And asking, ‘When there are all these disagreements at the global level, what can we do together?’”

He cites the Lusaka Agenda, a regional initiative in Africa to bolster local health infrastructure and national priority setting that also recognizes the World Health Organization’s continued indispensability at the global level. The success of WHO’s first investment round also signaled strong support among Member States. It raised $1.7 billion in pledges in six months. “[This] shows that there is confidence in WHO, and therefore in the UN system, to continue to guide the global health agenda,” says Ahmed.

An Alarming Rollback of Equal Rights

Across all of this year’s most urgent and complex crises, girls and women bore the brunt. “The global situation for girls and women continues to defy the laws of gravity,” Michelle says. “The challenges are immense, yet the money and political will put forth in 2024 to protect gender equality remained tiny by comparison.”

Right now, for example, the UN estimates that more than 600 million women and girls worldwide are affected by war, a 50% increase from a decade ago. And while the root causes of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Syria, and Yemen are all different, Michelle points out that the consequences are always the same: a rise in food insecurity and sexual violence among women, as well as maternal mortality.

“Poverty has a female face,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared at the start of this year’s Commission on the Status of Women, noting that the patriarchy is gaining ground thanks to the rolling back of sexual and reproductive rights by autocrats and populists. “We cannot accept a world in which grandmothers fear their granddaughters will enjoy fewer rights than they had,” he said.

In its latest report, UN Women found that the most dangerous place for women and girls globally is the home. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the Taliban enacted policies this year erasing girls and women from public life outside the home through bans on public speaking, access to public spaces, or education beyond sixth grade. Speaking at an event hosted by the UN Foundation on the sidelines of UNGA, Rina Amiri, an Afghan-born American diplomat who is serving as U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights, affirmed, “The Taliban is terrified of the power of women’s voices…Afghan women are not just fighting for their rights, but the rights of women everywhere…We need to match their courage.”

Looking Ahead

While the trajectory of multilateralism is uncertain, the urgency to rebuild trust in global cooperation remains clear. Since its founding in the aftermath of World War II, the UN has played an indispensable part in safeguarding the rights and well-being of humanity, especially the most vulnerable among us. “The UN has helped provide the longest period of peace, prosperity, and progress the world has ever seen,” George says.

And given ongoing conflict in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere, as well as the likelihood of more climate-related disasters in the coming years, support for the UN’s vital mission also remains critical. This means continued commitment to multilateral cooperation — especially funding — as well as the political will and wisdom to recognize that collective action is the only way to solve shared problems.

George likens the UN’s unseen impact to a “positive iceberg,” where much more lies beneath the surface. “There are so many things that we take for granted, from the weather on our phones, to planes being able to fly in the sky, to roads and water supplies in dozens of countries.” The UN makes it all happen, he points out.

Inés agrees. “It’s often easy to see the flaws, but it’s hard to see everything that has been achieved through the UN,” she says. “What I always reflect on is all that the UN does that people don’t see and all the work that comes behind the scenes that is actually generating progress.” She cites ongoing negotiations around a plastics treaty as an example of a few countries, including her home country of Peru, pushing global negotiations forward for the benefit of all countries. That is something she says young people like her could only dream of a few years ago.

Next year the UN will commemorate its 80th anniversary as a place where nations can unite. Although much has changed since 1945, the UN’s distinct value as a platform for international cooperation has remained steadfast.

“The UN is not something that sits in New York or Geneva or Vienna or Nairobi,” Ahmed says. “The UN is us and how we contribute to it. If there’s one reason the UN would need to be here, it is the simple reality of human beings and solidarity. Whenever there is a crisis, human beings come together.”